What happened?
Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has stepped down after saying that, as a Christian, it was impossible to do his job. “To be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me,” Farron said.
Farron had come under pressure over his views on abortion and homosexual acts. His opinions seemed to change back and forth, provoking confusion.
What the British media are saying
The Anglican philosopher John Milbank observed: “This is now a country where a politician can follow without disgrace Ayn Rand, who thought that morality was for wimps, but not Jesus Christ.”
At CapX, Andrew Lilico wrote: “To believe that gay sex is not wrong is to not be a Bible-believing Christian … And if we feel we cannot have either Bible-believing Christian or Muslim political leaders, can we really claim, with a straight face, to be a liberal society at all?”
But in the i paper, former Lib Dem MP David Laws said Farron had to go. “It is astonishing and depressing,” Laws wrote, that some Christians “continue to promote their messages of intolerance and prejudice in the 21st century.” True liberals should not tolerate Farron’s views, Laws said.
What Catholics are saying
“Does liberalism have any room left for Christians and other believers?” asked Sohrab Ahmari in the Wall Street Journal.
It seems ever clearer that the answer is no. “It isn’t enough to emancipate transgender people – you, rabbi, must adhere to strict pronoun guidelines and feel in your soul that Chelsea Manning was always a ‘she’. It isn’t enough to legalise abortion – you, Tim Farron, must like it.”
Blogger Laurence England noted that Farron had, in any case, prevaricated over his beliefs. His resignation was not encouraging, but perhaps we can hope that, one day, “a Catholic with an attractive personality and the courage of his convictions will step forward who will advance convincing arguments in defence of his religion in the public square within a mainstream political party.”
✣UAE mosque renamed Mary, Mother of Jesus
What happened?
A mosque in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has been renamed Mary, Mother of Jesus. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi crown prince and deputy head of the armed forces, ordered the renaming to “consolidate bonds of humanity between followers of different religions”.
Why was it under-reported?
Secular news sources may have been nonplussed by the story: it is not widely known that Mary is highly regarded within Islam.
Muslims affirm the Virgin Birth and the Annunciation; some Islamic scholars see her as the greatest woman ever. The Koran states: “O Mary! God has chosen you and purified you and again he has chosen you above all women of all nations of the worlds.” Hence the UAE’s gesture is a significant attempt to build bridges between Muslims – 80 per cent of the population – and Christians – about five per cent.
What will happen next?
The UAE is trying to position itself as the home of religious freedom in the Middle East. It has a Minister for Tolerance and has allowed 40 churches to open, a couple of which are Catholic.
However, in 2016 a US government report noted in that the country is far from perfect in its accommodation of non-Sunnis.
It can be difficult to get permission to open new churches, and there are laws (not always rigorously enforced) against evangelisation and some public displays of Christianity. The UAE’s experiment in tolerance will be worth watching.
✣The week ahead
Pope Francis will create five new cardinals at a consistory on Wednesday. Among them is Cardinal-designate Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, the first cardinal in Sweden’s history. The others are from Mali, Laos, El Salvador and Spain.
Unusually, the cardinal for El Salvador, Gregorio Rosa Chavez, is an auxiliary bishop of a diocese whose archbishop is not a cardinal.
On Saturday the ordinariate will undertake its national pilgrimage to Walsingham. A procession will go from the abbey grounds to the basilica and a sung Mass will be celebrated in the ordinariate rite in the Chapel of Reconciliation.
A Lithuanian archbishop murdered by lethal injection will be beatified on Sunday. Archbishop Teofilius Matulionis is the country’s first Soviet-era martyr to be declared Blessed. The beatification ceremony will take place in Vilnius, the capital, and is expected to draw 30,000 people. It is the first beatification to take place in Lithuania.
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