Kevin Meagher on why it would be a mistake for liberals and those on the left to push Catholics out of the progressive club with their anti-Papal rhetoric.
For many Catholics, the last few weeks have felt like being trapped in the home end at Ibrox during a Rangers versus Celtic “Old Firm” game. The tone of the attacks on the Pope ahead of his state visit to Britain have been splenetic, their tempo relentless. They have ranged from snide criticisms about paying for the state aspects of his visit (an invitation that came from a Labour government) through to the cartoonishly offensive remarks about the Pope’s German origin.
Over at Spiked, Frank Furudi described liberal anti-popery as an “Inquisition-in-reverse”, noting that the Pontiff’s visit seems to have “provided much of the British cultural elite with a figure that it is okay to hate”. Meanwhile Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, noted that while many reacted with horror at the French and Belgian ban on the burqa, “the response of some secular campaigners shows that such demonisation of religious groups is alive and kicking in the UK”.
The well-promulgated views of atheist deity, Richard Dawkins, will, of course, come as little surprise. But like boxing promoter Don King before a title fight, Dawkins has ratcheted his rhetoric to risible heights of self-parody. His message to the Pope?
“Go home to your tinpot Mussolini-concocted principality and don’t come back.”
Commenting on today’s ‘Protest the Pope’ march in London, the New Statesman’s Laurie Penny wades in:
“On Saturday, I’ll be marching through my home city beside thousands of others to tell bigots and dogmatists everywhere that if they try to push back at the raw edge of modernity, they’re going to get cut. If that conviction makes me anti-Catholic, then just give me a pen and show me where to sign.”
Meanwhile those irascible grumps at the British Secular Society should lie in a darkened room until the Pope has left. His every utterance seems to induce apoplexy.
Like many ordinary Catholics, my disdain for the vulgar, unworthy sentiments of Dawkins and his fellow secular jihadists is total; but I am duty bound to observe Voltaire’s dictum about defending the right to be expressed that with which I profoundly disagree. That is an absolute. As a liberal, I abide by it. But freedom of conscience is what Catholics in Britain demand in return. And that is an absolute too.
Many Catholics do not agree with every dot and comma of liberal-left theology. There are real philosophical differences over a range of social and moral issues; there is no point pretending otherwise. But there is enormous common ground between Catholics and other progressives around fair trade, arms reduction, the environment, human rights, racial justice and “solidarity towards the poor”, as the Pope made clear in his address in Westminster Hall yesterday. These provide the basis of a profound partnership and should not be casually dismissed.
Ordinary lay Catholics and clergy who supplied the infantry of the Make Poverty History campaign, or provide food and friendship to refugees and asylum seekers are progressives too. In deed, not just in word. Some people on the left seem to have a problem internalising that ‘contradiction’. But they had better. An attack on the Pope is an attack on all Catholics. Is the left in this country so over abundant with support that it can afford a ‘friendly fire’ incident that excludes literally millions of Catholics from membership of the progressive club?
That would be solely remiss given Catholics are some of the best members. As Ipsos MORI found while fewer than a quarter (22 per cent) of the public generally describe themselves as “Old Labour”, over a third (34 per cent) of Catholics say that term best describes their political view.
But this has not stopped David Cameron spying an opportunity to make a grab for Britain’s Catholic voters by aligning ‘The Big Society’ with Catholic social teaching in a piece in The Tablet. Of course the social catastrophe that awaits the poorest communities in Britain thanks to the coalition’s cuts is inimical to those very same teachings. But the fact that Mr Cameron is even trying should set alarm bells ringing.
Catholics have been a beleaguered minority within the British state for 500 years, suffering generations of privation and state-sponsored discrimination. There is a particular context to the experience of British Catholics that their mouthy critics should show more sensitivity towards.
These rhetorical attacks are violent, intimidating and provide a “dog whistle” for those whose objection to Catholicism will not be expressed intellectually. We are no more than one generation on from noxious, open, anti-Catholic bigotry. Once it came from reactionaries and Protestant fundamentalists. Now, alas, it comes wearing ‘liberal’ clothing.
Christopher Caldwell puts it well in today’s Financial Times:
“Most of the Pope’s detractors will admit that there is an old, embarrassing kind of “bad” anti-Catholicism, based on prejudice, ignorance and nationalism. They claim to represent instead a ‘good’ kind of protest, based on ethics and evidence. The distinction is not always obvious.”
If some on the liberal left have a problem with the Catholic Church then there must be an agreement to disagree. So-called liberals need to “walk the talk” on liberalism and park the violent rhetoric. My appeal to fellow progressives is not to make the incalculable, historic mistake of pushing Catholics out of the club.
46 Responses to “Beware of pushing Catholics out of the progressive club”
Mr. Sensible
Kevin, although I am not overly religious, I have absolutely no problem with the Pope visiting here.
I do, though, have a problem with some of what he has said on, for example, women bishops; I believe he once ranked that alongside what happened to those child abuse victims.
Steve
In his post following-up his article, Kevin Meagher again calls things correctly. Secularists and humanists (I accept there is a difference) don’t like organised religion full-stop. Many on the ProtestthePope march want to end Catholic schools – in other words, they weren’t just protesting about the Pope at all. They cannot abide that people believe in something which offends their ‘rationality’. There’s loads of stuff on which I disagree with the Pope (condoms here or in Africa for starters….) and the Church has a duty to turn paedophile priests over to the civil authorities for prosecution, but to hear the PtP demonstrators you’d think the RC Church was engaged in nothing but paedophilia and denunciation of minorities. I’ve never, ever heard a single condemnation of any individual or group from any RC pulpit in any RC Church I’ve attended. Yet listening to Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society (membership: slightly lower than the 1.2 billion in the RC Church) on the BBC News Channel yesterday all I heard was bile. And that’s progressive liberalism??????
Ash
@ Kevin
“if I were a Catholic critic (and, mostly, they number professional God-haters and their fellow travellers) I would be worried about the rather distasteful sight of a bunch of well-educated, middle-class white men (Dawkins, Fry, Grayling etc) hectoring and sneering at the Irish, Polish, African and Asian immigrants that overwhelming populate the Catholic Church in Britain.”
This invites a couple of comments:
1 – I just don’t think it’s right to suggest that UK critics of Church policy on the sort of issues we’re talking about – contraception, women’s and gay rights, HIV prevention, the handling of sex abuse cases – are overwhelming ‘God haters’, or even overwhelmingly non-Catholic. The plain fact is that many (even most) of the Church’s own members in this country, as well as many other religious people and many agnostics and atheists who don’t fit the ‘God hater’ stereotype, are more or less vocally disapproving of its teaching and policies in these areas.
2 – It’s a pretty low rhetorical trick, frankly, to characterize Church supporters in the way most likely to elicit liberal sympathy and then accuse protestors against the Church of ‘hectoring and sneering at’ those supporters. No doubt I would find, at an anti-BNP protest, a certain number of well-educated, middle-class types waving placards at many people who were low-paid or unemployed, in poor housing, perhaps let down by the education system etc. But only a BNP propagandist would do what you’re doing here by trying to paint such protests as being about powerful elites ‘hectoring and sneering at’ weak and voiceless minorities.
(And note that in that case, those dreadul middle-class liberals are speaking on behalf of people whose lives the BNP, as a fringe political party, doesn’t have *that* much power to affect. In the case of the protests you’re talking about, though, those middle-class liberals are speaking up for the rights of people around the world whose lives the Catholic Church, as a hugely wealthy and influential global institution, has enormous power to affect – in terms of their sexual and reproductive freedom and health especially.)
As for that business about ‘AIDS clinics in South Africa’: are you suggesting that, if Dawkins is serious about opposing the Church’s approach to HIV/AIDS, he should take steps to clean up what he sees as (partly) the Church’s mess by establishing such a clinic? Or are you simply suggesting that, as a decent human being, he might like to emulate the Church’s exemplary response to HIV/AIDS? What you wrote was ambiguous, but I have a horrible feeling it’s the latter you have in mind.
I have to confess that this pushes my ability to offer a reasoned and cool-headed response to its limits. The suggestion that an organisation that insists that, if people aren’t willing or able simply to stop having sex, they should risk contracting HIV and passing it on to their children rather than using a condom, can then claim credit for treating people who develop AIDS, is about the most absurd and morally repugnant thing I have ever heard. One might as well suggest that an organisation opposed to vaccination deserves credit for mopping the brows of people dying of TB.
Kevin Meagher
Ash – you accuse me of a “pretty low rhetorical trick” than liken me to a “BNP progagandist!” I would ask you to remove the beam from your own eye before telling me to remove the splinter in mine, but a biblical metaphor might upset you.
My point about Dawkins/ aids clinics is explicit. If professional Catholic-haters disapprove of the Catholic Church’s efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, then they should be prepared to put their money where their mouths are. No-one is stopping them setting up whatever clinics they wish. Be my guest.
Ash
Taking a step back, I’d like to just make this observation:
Insofar as we define the progressive/regressive distinction as being about issues to do with the distribution of wealth – as being about tackling poverty and inequality, challenging greed etc. – there’s some plausibility in the claim that the Church is on the ‘progressive’ side of the debate. And yes, the same is true if being ‘progressive’ is also to do with taking a certain view on arms reduction etc.(Though presumably not all Catholics see it that way, as many of them oppose progressive tax policies and so on.)
But when one comes to the liberal/conservative distinction, I just can’t see any good grounds for thinking that the Church is not on the *conservative* side of the debate. Surely liberalism has to do with defending people’s rights to live their own lives in their own way insofar as this does not harm other persons: gay people’s rights to marry and adopt, women’s rights to use contraception and to abort unwanted pregnancies, the rights of those suffering with incurable illnesses to end their own lives at a time of their choosing, etc.; and conservatism has to do with defending ‘traditional values’ that are at odds with such views. Plainly the Church is on the conservative side in such debates. (If the Church isn’t in the business of defending traditional values, I don’t know who is!)
So maybe Catholics can stay in the progressive club; but insofar as they support the Church’s socially conservative policies, they can’t expect to be welcome on the liberal subcommittee. (What I don’t understand is why such unapologetic social conservatives should want to self-identify as liberals.)