✣Rees-Mogg faces backlash on abortion and gay marriage
What happened?
Jacob Rees-Mogg told the ITV show Good Morning Britain that abortion was “morally indefensible” in all circumstances, including rape. The Somerset MP, tipped as a possible Tory leader, said: “Life is sacrosanct and begins at the point of conception.” On same-sex marriage, he said he took “the teaching of the Catholic Church seriously” and that it was “completely clear” on the subject. But he added: “The democratic majority is entitled to have the laws of the land as they are.”
What the British media are saying
The BBC said that Rees-Mogg was the “first British politician in decades to publicly oppose abortion in all cases”. Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore called him a “thoroughly modern bigot”. Religious faith was no excuse, she said – this kind of fundamentalism “has no place in public life”.
Brendan O’Neill at Spiked said the backlash against Rees-Mogg had “the whiff of anti-religious prejudice”. It went beyond saying “He’s wrong” to “He’s so wrong he doesn’t belong in political life or polite society.” Such a view echoed a centuries-old suspicion of “Romans” and “doubt as to their fitness for public office”. Perhaps, he said, “there should be a test: everyone who enters public life could be asked, ‘Do you now or have you ever held traditional Catholic beliefs?’ That should weed them out.”
What Catholics are saying
Fraser Nelson, writing in the Daily Telegraph, pointed out that Rees-Mogg’s views were not unusual. “Most people in most countries consider abortion morally wrong.” Even in secularised Europe a quarter of people shared that view. “What is unusual was the reaction, and the rigour with which the new liberal orthodoxy is being policed,” he wrote.
Joseph Shaw, at his lmschairman.org blog, said that while he supported Rees-Mogg’s stand, the MP’s choice of words had undermined the defence of life and marriage. By repeatedly saying that he accepted Catholic teaching, Shaw argued, he couched the subject in terms of faith, not reason, as though only Catholics would believe these things. That poses problems for the defence of marriage and life, Shaw wrote, and misrepresents the natural law.
✣Cardinal confronts Duterte over drug killings
What happened?
Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila has confronted the Filipino government over the mass killings being carried out around the country. Cardinal Tagle expressed his “pain” at the “stories of killing and horror” – a clear allusion to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, in which police have been shooting suspected drug
dealers.
Why was it under-reported?
President Duterte has receded from the front pages as the world worries about North Korea; and world leaders have also toned down their criticisms. The US administration has avoided denouncing Duterte’s drug war – indeed, Donald Trump said that Duterte was doing an “unbelievable job” as president. Britain’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, met Duterte in April and merely said that the two countries had “shared values”. Maybe it is this international silence that has prompted Cardinal Tagle’s strongest statement yet.
What will happen next?
The cardinal has asked Filipino churches to ring their bells at 8pm every evening – a practice that was expected to begin yesterday on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The tolling of bells in the evening, to announce prayers for the dead, is an old national custom. “Now is the time to revive it,” Cardinal Tagle said.
Duterte’s government said the cardinal should focus on the need to fight the drug trade, and that Duterte’s efforts had been mostly bloodless. The cardinal seems to have decided that words of criticism are no longer enough.
✣The week ahead
Auxiliary Bishop Robert Byrne of Birmingham will lead a pilgrimage of reparation and prayer for the sanctity of life at Walsingham on Sunday. The day will include Confessions, Mass, Adoration, Stations of the Cross and Benediction. There will also be a silent walk along the Holy Mile. The pilgrimage takes place 50 years after the Abortion Act was passed into law.
The relics of St Padre Pio are embarking on the second part of their tour of America. They arrive in New York on Sunday and, over the following 12 days, pass through Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Connecticut and Michigan.
Pope Francis will meet the president of Peru next Friday ahead of his trip to the country in January. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 78, is a rare kind of South American leader – an Oxford-educated economist who has worked on Wall Street and for the World Bank. He is also a divorced and remarried Catholic. He has said the papal visit will be a “huge success”.
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