Soctland’s new cardinal-designate is a liberal on some matters like contraception, women priests, celibacy and homosexuality. Well, he was. After making statements like “What I would ask for in the Church at every level, including the cardinals and the Pope, is to be able to have full and open discussion about these issues and where we stand,” he was threatened with having his new job taken away from him. He then had to put out a statement:
“I accept and intend to defend the law on ecclesiastical celibacy as it is proposed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church; I accept and promise to defend the ecclesiastical teaching about the immorality of the homosexual act; I accept and promise to promulgate always and everywhere what the Church’s Magisterium teaches on contraception.” Some elements within the Church claimed the statement had been made under pressure from the Vatican, a claim denied by a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland and the cardinal-designate himself, who added today: “Having recently restated my loyalty to the Church, its teachings and the Pope, I would hope that Catholics everywhere would join with me in respecting the decisions of the Pope and demonstrate their own loyalty by not questioning them.”
An anonymous fax sent to news organisations and Catholic groups said: “O’Brien was told by the Vatican if he did not correct what he said at a mass on October 1 he would not be allowed to become a cardinal.”
The question here is not whether Rome has the right to do what it just has. The question is whether matters at the heart of controversy and dissent within the Church can even be discussed and debated. They cannot. The Cardinal sounds like a Soviet apparatchik, parroting official propaganda he doesn’t believe in, not a man of the church answering to his own conscience and asking questions that the faithful are also asking. But those are the kind of leaders the current hierarchy wants. And the chilling of all debate is now heading for the deep freeze.
The Dish 