Defamation

A purely academic question, and just out of interest, would it amount to actionable libel or slander in the U.K. to write or say that someone was homosexual or a practising homosexual if they were not?

I have absolutely no intention of putting the answer to the test.

OK, MAYBE I'M THICK, BUT I REALLY WANT TO KNOW

1 Is it a truth that, as we pray, so we believe (lex orendi lex credendi)?

2 If it isn't true, why did those early, headstrong, bigoted, un-nuancing, bloody-minded Christians choose death rather than burn a pinch of incense on Caesar's altar?

3 If it is true, how would Archbishop Nichols explain, or nuance, the flowers he laid on a Hindu altar in Willesden?

4 Is the Pope infallible when he speaks ex cathedra on matters of Faith and morals?

4 If he isn't infallible, and the doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church are a bit, shall we say, dodgy in places, will I still get to Heaven (if there is one) if I start my own church of Diogenes (no, not the Saint) and retire to a sunny barrel somewhere? (Yes, I know what he did in the barrel)

5 If he is, Why don't you rejecters of infallible Papal teaching go and...found you own church of saint Diogenes and.....?

6 I know there are groups for Catholic homosexuals, homosexualists, leathermen (in San Francisco, apparently ok'd by the Jesuits), for Catholics supporting female ordination, and so on.

What I want to know is: is there a group for lazy Catholics like me who don't want to have to go to Mass and all that boring stuff?

7 If not, isn't it time I started one? Isn't it time, that the Church, as Tony Blair said, caught up with what the people in the pew really believe?

8 If there is such a group, what does Vincent Nichols have to say about it.

Decency Is Not Enough

A German woman told me, some 40 years ago, that before the war, her parents who were teachers living in Berlin, witnessed a riot during which a policeman had his eye deliberately gouged out by a communist. As soon as it was safe to leave their flat, they went to the local Nazi party offices and enrolled.

As someone said, “No one is more dangerous than a decent person with a sense of outrage”.

I smell danger now. England long ago ceased to be a religious country, but most of its population, until fairly recently, retained ideas of decency. As Harold Macmillan famously said, “Without religion, there is only decency. Decency is good, but it is not enough.”

Decency is vulnerable to the false idea of “fair play”.Think of the noble stupidity of the English allowing the heathen Danes to cross the causeway at Maldon. Think of the legislation since 1967 which has so undermined morals and decency: it has all appealed to that same decency.

Ending “back street” abortions – what decent person wants a woman to die in a botched abortion?

Legalising homosexual acts – what decent person wants otherwise law-abiding people subjected to blackmail, arrest, shame, and so on?

Lowering the age of homosexual consent to 16 – what decent person (well I for one) wants to deny anyone over that age of consent the right to be truly himself/herself? (or deny the right of elderly homosexual roués to enjoy sex with teenagers?)

Outlawing “hate speech” – no decent person would speak hatefully of another.

God forbid!

Err…Who?

So, the appeal to decency has resulted in:

Horrible and painful death for the unborn,

Aggressive homosexualism, and the teaching even in Catholic schools that homosexual acts are “acceptable”,

The corruption of minds and hearts,

The curtailment of free speech, so that religions are barred from stating their conscientious opposition to certain types of behaviour,

A vigorous and lucrative sex industry.

We can either go along with this, as the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales and their Education Service seem to be doing, or we, too, can get aggressive and draw lines in the sand.

Civil disobedience is preferable to outright violence, and certainly preferable to a new Hitler, riding on the backs of the outraged.