Lord Alton, Britain's Pro-Life Record, and the General Election

Lord Alton of Liverpool, the great pro-life champion in the British parliament, is currently visiting Rome.

Last Friday night he gave a very interesting address to the Venerable English College.

As expected, he made some powerful points - here are just a few which stuck in my mind:

1) The UK government continues to use taxpayer's money to fund abortions worldwide, including giving millions of pounds to the UNFPA and others - not only to pay for abortions in developed countries, but also to uphold China's one-child policy. (He showed case studies of Chinese parents forced to have their children aborted using the pressure of torture and other means).

2) 600 abortions take place everyday in the UK, 40 million unborn babies are killed worldwide every year.

3) In the UK, unborn babies with disabilities can be aborted right up to birth.

4) Gordon Brown used a three line whip (in other words, all Labour MPs were forced to vote) to pass the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill which included allowing scientists to conduct research on animal-hybrid embryos - despite notable scientists saying they didn't know what the benefits of such experiments would be. (Interestingly even Lord Steele, who was instrumental in legalizing abortion in the UK in the 1960s, opposed the Bill, and has opposed legalized euthanasia). Britain is the only country in the world to have legislated in favour of such research.

5) Around 3000 euthanasia deaths take place every year in Holland, 1000 of which are involuntary - i.e. occur without the consent of the patient. He said that showed how, once legalized, euthanasia can easily be used to kill elderly patients against their will.

6) Something the pagans noticed which was different about the first Christians was that "they didn't kill their offspring."

What I particularly like about Lord Alton is that he is pro-life not just on the three key issues of abortion, embryology and euthanasia, but also passionately speaks out on other social justice issues, whether they be concern for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta or defenceless civilians caught up in the conflict in Darfur. Quoting the late Archbishop Worlock, he stressed that as Christians we should be concerned about protecting life "From the Womb to the Tomb".

I asked him afterwards who he thought was the most pro-life candidate in the general election. He said that the position of Cameron, Clegg and Brown is not as important as that of the constituency candidate, so when voting it's better to find out each prospective MP's position (he didn't like the TV debates for this reason - the electorate aren't voting for a president but for their local MP).

But when pressed, he said that although none of the party leaders score well on pro-life issues, Cameron is best because he insists each issue is a matter of individual conscience while the others take a more rigid party line.

Goebbels, the Church and Pedophilia

Likening Dawkins and others to the Nazis is a bit of a cheap shot but there is a precedent in history.

According to Massimo Introvigne of Corriere della Sera, the Nazis did in fact try to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests. In 1937, he writes, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels organized such a campaign after Pope Pius XI severely criticised the Nazi regime.

The parallels are disturbing. Just as cases of pedophilia are suddenly coming to light after decades since they occurred, so Goebbels instructed the Gestapo "to “reopen” the cases from 1936 and also older cases, constantly recalling them to public opinion," according to Introvigne.

Goebbels also ordered the Gestapo to find witnesses willing to accuse a certain number of priests, threatening them with immediate arrest if they didn’t collaborate, even if they were children.

It's an interesting article worth reading, and you won't of course see it reported in many other places.

Dawkins Video Parody

This has already done the rounds, but if you haven't seen it yet, it's a funny parody of the ridiculous Dawkins-Hitchens stunt to arrest the Pope in Britain.

I hear the film company is trying to take these down so apologies if the link doesn't work.

Beware the LibDems

Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham is warning that a victory by the Liberal Democrats in the May 6 general election could threaten the existence of Catholic schools. The party has pledged to make it illegal for religious schools to select students on the basis of their faith.

“Catholics should give it very serious consideration before they vote Liberal Democrat,” said Bishop McMahon. “Our position is that every person should have the right to bring up their children according to their consciences.”

That's not all. A LibDem win would threaten religious freedom and the right to life in general. The most militant secularists in the last parliament weren't Labour MPs but LibDem ones.

Yet Britain has, until recently, historically been an example to the world when it comes to religious freedom. Having just got back from Malta, I was interested to learn that in contrast to their other rulers, the British not only allowed Catholicism to continue but actually helped it prosper. The same approach to religion could be seen in just about every other colony.

Weigel Takes Hans Kueng to Task

George Weigel has excoriated Hans Kueng in this welcome article published today by First Things.

It comes in response to Kueng's open letter to bishops, published in the Irish Times and aimed at fomenting dissent and disapproval of Benedict XVI. That he would see himself in a position to take such an initiative in relation to bishops says rather a lot about Kueng.

Weigel begins his piece by recalling how Kueng, when a professor in the 1960s, bought himself a Mercedes convertible, assumed to have a been the fruit of the success of his book. This is well known and some might think it irrelevant, but I believe it's important as it gives further insight into his character.

As I found researching my recent piece on Christopher Hitchens, one can discover a fair amount about a person's anger and dissent by studying their past.

Perhaps it's time someone took a closer look at Kueng's.

Incidentally, two things I missed out of the Hitchens piece which should probably have been included: firstly that he is a heavy drinker (though this is well known), but secondly I've since discovered that his mother and her ex-Anglican vicar lover took their own lives after becoming caught up in the cult of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, "the sinister windbag who had brought enlightenment to the Beatles in the summer of love," as Hitchens puts it.

Yet more fuel to stoke Hitchens's hatred of religion, though ironically the Catholic Church was the only serious critic of the "free love" mentality of the 60s and 70s.

Picture: a caricature of Hans Kueng I drew for The Tablet a year or two ago.

Hitchens and the Pope

I've written a short expose of Christopher Hitchens, along with an analysis of the strange plan he and Richard Dawkins have cooked up to arrest the Pope when he comes to Britain.

Hitchens's past cannot but have an effect on how he sees religion. Someone said Thomas Merton also had a past, as of course did many great saints. Yes, but the difference is that they eventually turned to Christ and then walked in the light.

On the Pope's visit, I agree with this assessment of Father Z, that my fellow Brits will be pleasantly surprised when he sets foot in the country:

* He is not going to fit the image promoted by the MSM (mass media) and their twisted expectations.
* They will see a man who is joyful and serene.
* He will not be depressed or morose or crushed or over-burdened.
* He will not soften his message to the English people about the need for God in their lives.
* He will not dodge hard issues, such as the clerical abuse controversy, but will confront them head on.
* People will flock to see him and listen to what he has to say and his message will make more sense than what they get from the MSM.
* Vocations to the priesthood and religious will rise after his visit.

As with everywhere he visits, he has a great tendency to disarm his critics by his meek, humble and completely unimposing personality.

It's also his 83rd birthday today - Happy Birthday Holy Father!

Journalists Abandon Standards to Attack the Pope

Journalists such as myself will of course make mistakes, but when so many are made in a story, you've got to start wondering if there's not a hidden agenda. In much of the mass media's coverage of the sexual abuse scandal (The London Times, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, NBC), it's quite clear there is.

Here's an excellent expose of a recent story, by Phil Lawler of Catholic World News:

Journalists abandon standards to attack the Pope

We're off and running once again, with another completely phony story that purports to implicate Pope Benedict XVI in the protection of abusive priests.

The "exclusive" story released by AP yesterday, which has been dutifully passed along now by scores of major media outlets, would never have seen the light of day if normal journalistic standards had been in place. Careful editors should have asked a series of probing questions, and in every case the answer to those questions would have shown that the story had no "legs."

First to repeat the bare-bones version of the story: in November 1985, then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed a letter deferring a decision on the laicization of Father Stephen Kiesle, a California priest who had been accused of molesting boys.

Now the key questions:

• Was Cardinal Ratzinger responding to the complaints of priestly pedophilia? No. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the future Pontiff headed, did not have jurisdiction for pedophile priests until 2001. The cardinal was weighing a request for laicization of Kiesle.

• Had Oakland's Bishop John Cummins sought to laicize Kiesle as punishment for his misconduct? No. Kiesle himself asked to be released from the priesthood. The bishop supported the wayward priest's application.

• Was the request for laicization denied? No. Eventually, in 1987, the Vatican approved Kiesle's dismissal from the priesthood.

• Did Kiesle abuse children again before he was laicized? To the best of our knowledge, No. The next complaints against him arose in 2002: 15 years after he was dismissed from the priesthood.

• Did Cardinal Ratzinger's reluctance to make a quick decision mean that Kiesle remained in active ministry? No. Bishop Cummins had the authority to suspend the predator-priest, and in fact he had placed him on an extended leave of absence long before the application for laicization was entered.

• Would quicker laicization have protected children in California? No. Cardinal Ratzinger did not have the power to put Kiesle behind bars. If Kiesle had been defrocked in 1985 instead of 1987, he would have remained at large, thanks to a light sentence from the California courts. As things stood, he remained at large. He was not engaged in parish ministry and had no special access to children.

• Did the Vatican cover up evidence of Kiesle's predatory behavior? No. The civil courts of California destroyed that evidence after the priest completed a sentence of probation-- before the case ever reached Rome.

So to review: This was not a case in which a bishop wanted to discipline his priest and the Vatican official demurred. This was not a case in which a priest remained active in ministry, and the Vatican did nothing to protect the children under his pastoral care. This was not a case in which the Vatican covered up evidence of a priest's misconduct. This was a case in which a priest asked to be released from his vows, and the Vatican-- which had been flooded by such requests throughout the 1970s -- wanted to consider all such cases carefully. In short, if you're looking for evidence of a sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, this case is irrelevant.

We Americans know what a sex-abuse crisis looks like. The scandal erupts when evidence emerges that bishops have protected abusive priests, kept them active in parish assignments, covered up evidence of the charges against them, and lied to their people. There is no such evidence in this or any other case involving Pope Benedict XVI.

Competent reporters, when dealing with a story that involves special expertise, seek information from experts in that field. Capable journalists following this story should have sought out canon lawyers to explain the 1985 document-- not merely relied on the highly biased testimony of civil lawyers who have lodged multiple suits against the Church. If they had understood the case, objective reporters would have recognized that they had no story. But in this case, reporters for the major media outlets are far from objective.

The New York Times-- which touched off this feeding frenzy with two error-riddled front-page reports-- seized on the latest "scoop" by AP to say that the 1985 document exemplified:

…the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.

Here we have a complete rewriting of history. Earlier in this decade, American newspapers exposed the sad truth that many American bishops had kept pedophile priests in active ministry. Now the Times, which played an active role in exposing that scandal, would have us believe that the American bishops were striving to rid the priesthood of the predators, and the Vatican resisted!

No, what is "fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal" is a media frenzy. There is a scandal here, indeed, but it's not the scandal you're reading about in the mass media. The scandal is the complete collapse of journalistic standards in the handling of this story.