Whilst the Catholic Church and its teachings are a source of comfort for millions of people around the world we must remember that, in this country at least, it is a minority faith and its belief, especially around abortion, are the views of a minority.
Why on this issue should we take the advice of a man who has, or so he tells us at least, never had sex? A man who has never been in a loving relationship? A man who has never had a one-night stand? A man who has never in the course of a relationship had contraception fail? A man who cannot know anything about sex, the implications and ramifications of sex or, by definition, the female body.
I see no reason whatsoever, dear reader, why we should take any advice on moral issues from a Cardinal from the Catholic Church partly because I think his and its stance on many issues is fundamentally immoral (its stance on contraception particularly in Africa is stupid at best, downright evil at worst), partly because he is wrong and partly because he cannot be an expert in the field of sexual health.
I am not sure we should take advice on moral issues from a representative of an organisation which managed to denounce liberation theology but was less forthcoming in its condemnation of fascism in Italy and national socialism in Germany.
I am not sure why we should take advice from the representative of an organisation which has colluded and covered up the widespread abuse of children across countries and continents - a collusion that the overwhelming majority of senior Catholic leaders must have known about and a collusion that is yet another stain on the reputation of the Catholic church.
And whilst O'Brien may have had no part in those decisions, it is important to remember the selective and sometimes obscure morality of the Catholic Church and with these thoughts in my mind, I feel uneasy about Cardinal O'Brien's recent forays into the political sphere. And though he claims that this is not a political issue, we all know that it is and we all know that he knows it.
A MONTH has passed since I preached a sermon at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh in which I criticised our country's abortion legislation.
And you were wrong then.
I have never had a greater response to any sermon or been so inundated with letters, e-mails and telephone calls offering support and thanks for my words.
I'm not surprised. Not many of your sermons deliberately invoke the image of the Dunblane Massacre.
Messages of goodwill have arrived from as far afield as New Zealand and the Philippines and from across Europe.
Good stuff. When the people of the Philippines and New Zealand have a say in how we run our affairs, I suppose this might be useful. However, what the good cardinal is doing here is to try and show he has global support... we aren't told who wrote to him. He may have been inundated with messages of support from New Zealand or, alternatively, he might have received a note from a friend he met at John Paul II's wake.
Leaders of other Churches have indicated their support, as have many medical professionals. It is as if a dam has burst its banks and a great wave of compassion for the unborn has been released.
Really? Why do the vast majority of the British public still support the right to choose then?
A surgeon wrote saying: "I am very pleased to see someone of your influence speaking out about the sorry state of this country whereby thousands of unborn healthy children are destroyed by the NHS and its abortion agencies, and most politicians seem totally unconcerned or ambivalent."
The surgeon, sir, is an idiot of truly Blairish proportions. Politicians are concerned and they are not ambivalent. They just happen not to agree with him.
He went on: "I feel powerless to halt the carnage and there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing little arms and legs being sucked down a glass tube and binned for the sake of someone's lifestyle."
I don't think anybody is pro-abortion but rather pro-choice. We all know that it is a nasty, invasive, distressing operation. It would be less so if religious leaders didn't poke the finger of blame at the poor woman who has gone through the ordeal accusing her of being little better than a murderer.
Little wonder that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recently highlighted the "growing problem of trainees opting out of training in the termination of pregnancy".
This doesn't mean that they are anti-choice rather that they do not wish to perform a certain procedure. Although, of course, we don't see the context of this quote... Note that they see it as a problem suggesting, at least, that they believe that the procedure is one that doctors should undertake…
This may be one of many symptoms of a society slowly awakening to the brutal reality of what it means to destroy a sizeable portion of the next generation.
Again, this isn't true... the overwhelming majority of the British public (over 70% according to today's Scotsman editorial) are in favour of a woman's right to choose. Furthermore, only 4% (same source) are pro a total ban.
A small number of those who wrote to me and responded publicly to my comments objected to my language and criticised me for entering the political sphere.
I suppose small number is relative. I agree with this ‘small number’ what qualifies this man to threaten, coerce and 'lay down the gauntlet' to elected representatives?
The language I used was strong, I reminded my listeners that in Scotland "we kill the equivalent of a classroom full of school children every day". I did so not because I wished to be sensational and certainly not because I wished to offend. I did so because it is true.
But it did offend and you knew it would offend.
Likewise, I did enter into a debate, which has, wrongly in my view, come to be viewed as political.
Of course it is. This is an obvious ploy - make the issue to be a moral one and not a political or medical one. This means the Catholic church has a relevance in the debate that it wouldn't have otherwise. This is shifting the goalposts, somewhat.
Abortion is neither political nor medical, though clearly it has implications in these spheres.
Implications on the medical sphere? For fucks' sake. It is members of the medical profession that perform abortions. It will be members of the medical profession who have to sew women back together after the backstreet butchers have had their way if you lots dreams come true.
It is about morality and the destruction of human life.
Well, I suppose you guys are the experts... How many heretics did you burn? How many died at the hands of the Inquisition? How many people who could have been cured died in Mother Theresa's shack? How many died as you turned a blind eye to Hitler and Mussolini? But let us not be facetious. This is, of course, a deeply moral issue but morals do not come from desert religions but rather a matter of personal conduct and individual conscience.
It is not something our political parties tend to campaign or give manifesto commitments on, it is rightly deemed a matter of conscience and MP's have a free vote.
And if a free vote was held tomorrow, what would be the result, Cardinal?
Parliamentary debates therefore comprise 645 individuals expressing personal views informed by faith, conscience, experience, or a combination of these.
It is interesting in the extreme that he talks about experience. As a male, he will never experience (and can never experience) the operation. As a male who refuses to have sexual intercourse, he can never know the feelings invoked by parenthood or potential parenthood.
This is a man who has no experience in these matters and can have no experience in these
matters. He has his faith, of course, and I presume he has a conscience (although, with the Catholic Church's policies killing millions in Africa each year I'm not so sure) but these are different in all of us.
Sadly, few, if any of our MPs have training in ethics, moral philosophy or theology.
Bingo! So we need to be experts now? A few lines further up he seemed to be applauding the general public (and the publics of other nations) for agreeing with him. Surely, though, the general public, on the whole, has not trained in ethics, traing in moral philosophy or theology? And where, sir, in the Bible does it mention abortion?
Well, to my knowledge, and unlike Bertie Wooster I never won my Prep School Scripture Knowledge Prize the only reference is:
"If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
"And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth …" (Deuteronomy)
Now, I would believe that this suggests that whoever wrote the Bible believed that abortion may no be desirable but it certainly isn’t murder (the punishment in the Old Testament for murder is death. The punishment for causing a woman to abort seems to be a large fine’). I would suspect that this would mean that the Church should not view the a foetus as a person. Why should we study theology if, Cardinal, you ignore the Bible’s word?
Similarly, our medical professionals tend to have very little training in these areas, yet, surprisingly, perhaps our media tend always and instantly to medicalise or politicise this profoundly moral question.
This is nonsense, of course. I think many medical students (all?) have to study medical ethics.
Accordingly, the "abortion debate" in the UK rarely involves any actual discussion about the realities of abortion!
This is a red herring. The debate is about whether or not a woman has control over her own body. Everybody knows this. Everybody realises this is an intensely emotive issue and most people acknowledge that at some point the foetus should have some rights. Very few people believe that at the moment of conception that cluster of cells has the same rights as a 54 year old advocate.
'Red herrings' and diversionary tactics keep us from proper consideration of the value of each and every human life.
It’s interesting that you put such a value on human life, Cardinal. Why does the Catholic Church let some of its representatives propagate the myth that condoms have small holes in which the AIDS virus can pass (but, surprisingly, spermatozoa cannot)
As Cardinal Pell of Australia recently said: "Serious anti-lifers and publicity seekers have been trying to shoot the messenger while they work to bury the message."
Anti-lifers shooting the messenger? Dear Darwin… Sophistry seems to have no end with this shower.
Although abortion statistics are regularly published, they have little or no effect. Familiarity has bred contempt. It is a contempt, which must be challenged. I believe the time has come for a wide ranging and open debate in this country about abortion.
It should not be dominated by our political elites or medical professionals, by religious leaders or pressure groups, but should be open to all.
Hang on? You were complaining a minute ago that politicians and medical types hadn’t been trained in ethics? Do you think Essex Man has?
Perhaps the saddest letter I received recently was from an elderly lady in Edinburgh, who wrote: "I was so happy you are fighting abortion. I had an abortion in 1979. It was so easy to get the abortion with my history of depression and poor health. There was no-one there to talk to at length. Please use the people who have lost a baby to counsel those who think of abortion."
Whilst I feel sorry for this poor woman who clearly found the abortion a traumatic experience we could have a system of better counseling, better mental health care and better support services. It doesn’t mean, necessarily, banning abortion.
And what would be the alternative? Well, if abortion were to be banned, we’d return to the bad old days of poor women being forced into backstreets (often by their families or because of fear of recriminations from their communities) to be operated on by untrained men in unclean surroundings with rudimentary equipment. The foetus was terminated and all too often so were the women. If they weren’t, they would have long-term health problems, possible infertility and no support services. A traumatic, invasive, deeply upsetting procedure has just got worse… well done, sir.
The idea to get people who have lost a child to counsel those who want to have an abortion is fucking lunacy.
We must urgently consider what help we can give to those contemplating abortion as well as those who have endured it, and ask why a conspiracy of silence prevents their sad and wounded voices from ever being heard.
There is no conspiracy here. People might not want to talk about the operation… unsurprisingly so.
We should also ask why no public funding is given to agencies which support women through a crisis pregnancy while large sums are provided to agencies who help women end one.
Well, perhaps, it would depend on whether or not these groups suggest the option of abortion or, are, simply organs of the Church.
I hope our new Prime Minister will not do the same. Gordon Brown is a man of principle and deeply held moral convictions. Our views on Trident may differ, but, like me, he has seen the suffering caused by poverty and malnutrition in many developing countries and has sought to persuade the decision makers of the developed world in forums like the G8 gatherings to respond to the desperate need of our fellow human beings.
If Brown has any sense he will nod and smile when you speak to him and ignore you entirely.
In doing so he appeals to their desire to save and protect human life - the most noble motivation of all. I know he will continue to advocate the cause of life in that area, and I commend him for doing so. Additionally, however, I hope he will consider joining with me in support of human life in another sphere - the defence of life as yet unborn. In the case of life in the womb it is unarguable that, from conception onwards, human life has begun.
And what of miscarriage? What does that come under in this zero sum argumentation? Or ectopic pregnancies – is a life that starts in the Fallopian Tubes or the Cervix or the ovaries not a life but one that starts in the womb definitely one? Or what of a life that has started but endangers the mothers life?
It is not unarguable this is slippery slope argumentation at its laziest and sloppiest. Slippery slopes should be avoided… For example, if we are choosing a speed limit we may pick 30 miles per hour and make it the law. We do not necessarily believe that 31 miles per hour is always unsafe and 29 miles per hour is always safe but to argue ‘there is no principled place to draw a line, so let us not have a limit’ is ludicrous’
What exists in the womb is not "a potential human being", but rather "a human being with potential".
I could move to America and become an American citizen. I have the potential to be an American, should I, now, be accorded the rights of an American? Potential is a dangerous word here (and let’s not even consider the saccharine, schmaltzy ‘human with potential’ above).
As Simon Blackburn puts it ‘An Acorn is a potential oak-tree without itself being an oak tree.’
With that reality in mind our compassion towards the newborn and starving child in Darfur or Eritrea is surely hypocritical and hollow if we wantonly ignore the needs of their unborn counterparts in Dunfermline or Edinburgh who, through abortion, face the end of their short lives just as certainly as if they were born into poverty and malnutrition on the other side of the globe.
Yet isn't compassion for our fellow human beings indivisible? Doesn't it apply to all or to none? And doesn't our failure to apply it equitably leave us guilty of expediency, hypocrisy - even sinful negligence?
No. It is not hypocritical because I don’t believe that a blastocyst is a human being.
I would say, however, that is deeply hypocritical and sinful to worry about a British foetus and actively promote policies that keep Africans in poverty and to promote policies that mean AIDS sufferers in South Africa do not wear condoms. Or is a British foetus worthy of more consideration than an African with AIDS?
RS
