The Vatican does not stop at preaching a harmful and absurd sexual "morality" to their believers that damages them for life. It even tries to impose its religious teachings about sex on secular society.
It's one thing for the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy to insist that all gay and lesbian people live a life of celibacy. It's something completely different for the Vatican to support the criminalisation of homosexuality, so that individual gay people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, cannot exercise their free will to have a sex life without fear of imprisonment.
The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI even opposed a UN resolution to decriminalise homosexuality worldwide: a resolution that included a call for the abolition of the death penalty for homosexuality where it still exists.
The same applies to same-sex marriage. It is one thing for the Vatican to tell gay Roman Catholics they should not marry, and to forbid same-sex marriage in Roman Catholic Churches. It is another thing entirely to campaign to prevent Catholics and non-Catholic LGBT people alike in the UK being able to get married in a register office. A campaign spearheaded by the disgraced hypocrite, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, no less.
The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy seems to think it is still running a theocracy, campaigning to impose Roman Catholic teachings on the rest of the UK.
As for O'Brien, it is best that we all forgive him for behaving like such an odious and objectionable loudmouth while himself indulging in the gay sex that would still be illegal and deeply stigmatised if the church of which he was cardinal had been able to prevail on the issue.
A number of orthodox Catholics declared we must not judge Cardinal O'Brien. Ironically, I do not recall many of the same people declaring that gay and lesbian people should not be judged. On the contrary, O'Brien and his conservative Catholic supporters have made plenty of judgments over their lifetime that have caused deep offence to others, and no doubt psychologically damaged gay and lesbian childen in Catholic families. O'Brien must be forgiven, but not excused.
And as for the attempts by embarrassed conservative Catholics to claim O'Brien has not been a hypocrite, it should be borne in mind that the height to which such apologists are trying to raise the bar for a judgment of hypocrisy to be justified, is such that it would be impossible to make that accusation of anyone.
Sure, if he was someone wracked with guilt about sexual urges and fantasies he regarded as disordered and sinful, and had such poor impulse control that he occasionally made advances to other priests, and was remorseful every time that happened and confessed with a resolution not to let it happen again .... if all these things were true, he would not be a hypocrite. But just ask yourself what the likelihood of this scenario is. Anyone accused of hypocrisy could cling to that defence, no matter how many times they had erred.
Instead, the judgment of hypocrisy should be made on the balance of probabilities. Don't forget that he initially publicly denied the allegations: this in itself was a public declaration that those making the allegations were liars. Imagine what it must feel like, first to be on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances from one's superior, only (initially) to be called a liar when those advances are reported.
The initial denial of the allegations, and the fact the misdemeanours were repeated, do not seem to me to point to the actions of someone wracked with contrition.
There are many decent, thinking, liberal Catholics. It is very probably the case that the majority fall into that category. And a great many Catholics are inspired by their faith to do great works for others, and to live lives of compassion that inspire others. Such people deserve much better than the dogmatic hierarchy leading them at the moment, who still have a foot in the Middle Ages.
One of the great Catholic intellectuals of our time is Prof. Hans Küng who wrote "On Being a Christian." This is an exposition of a form of Catholicism that focuses on the development of spirituality and eschews the ignorance and bigotry that continues to be peddled by an ossified Vatican hierarchy that continues to alienate so many modern Catholics. The Vatican has done its best to isolate and silence him, but his books make fascinating reading for anyone interested in church history, the liberation from ecclesiastical oppression, and the pursuit of spirituality without dogmatism.
© Gary Powell, 2013
