Wednesday 15 February 2012

Two cheers only for Baroness Warsi

Despite the recent robust intervention of Mr Eric Pickles on the subject of local authority prayers and the undoubted good intentions behind Baroness Warsi's supportive words during her visit to the Vatican yesterday [see here], the attitude towards religion - and the Christian religion in particular - of the Government they represent is fundamentally schizophrenic.

As he so often does, Cranmer ('What kind of idiot does Baroness Warsi take the Pope for?') says it all about the Prime Minister's publicly expressed approach to faith, which itself illustrates quite clearly that if there is anything more foolish than the forays of churchmen into politics, it is the incursions of modern secularised politicians into matters of theology:

"But the inference is, in any case, quite clear: if you disagree with him, you are intolerant, unwelcoming and narrow-minded, which amounts to the same as being unloving, inhospitable and bigoted. To be a clanging cymbal with no love is not to be a Christian of any kind. Cameron and Warsi are themselves part of the ‘well-intentioned liberal elite’. They want us to ‘do God’ more assertively, but not the Pope’s kind of God. For if you believe the inclination toward homosexuality to be an ‘intrinsic disorder’, and if you believe marriage to be heterosexual, you are a homophobe. If you believe women should be neither priests nor bishops, you are a misogynist. If you oppose abortion and contraception, you are anti-liberty and anti-women’s rights..."
So essentially, it seems, according to our 'Conservative'- led Government, we are allowed any religion just so long as it accords with the diluted or etiolated version promoted to the exclusion of all others by such people as Christina Rees and her friends in what Baroness Warsi has herself denounced with unconscious irony as the "liberal elite."

So, as Cranmer himself says, given the present British Government's continuation of its New Labour predecessor's oppressively one-size fits-all policies of 'equality' and 'inclusion,' it's highly unlikely that  Pope Benedict will be taken in by expressions of good will which seem to fly in the face of what is actually happening on the ground.

The full text of Baroness Warsi's speech is here

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