The creation of a cohesive, easily malleable group of people is the aim of governments

First, a little story, a true one.

A few years ago, when I was working for a homelessness charity In London, a young pregnant client asked me to help her get an abortion.

When I replied that, as a Roman Catholic, I could not help with an abortion, but suggested charities which could help her with preparing for the baby and finding a flat, she complained to the manager, who told me I could not continue to work for the organization, which was multicultural, and so valued and promoted all cultures. I was not open to the client’s culture.

I asked her if the organization practised religious discrimination, and reminded her that my application for the job had been supported by a reference from an openly Catholic priest.

She asked me if my anti-abortion stance was part of my “culture”. I replied, “No, part of my religion.” She relaxed at this, and said, ”We value and respect all cultures here, including yours.”

And so the conversation ended and I kept my job, on the understanding that my religion was just a part of my “culture”, like enjoying poetry, or alcohol, or jazz, or wearing a tie - quite acceptable as a lifestyle choice, as long as it poses no threat to the social cohesion demanded by governments from the disparate people they govern.

Culture and religion are not the same. For seriously religious people, their  co-religionist are their tribe, their  nation. Whoever shares my religion, whatever her or his ethnicity, colour, social class, personal hygiene, taste in music, shirts, or food, is  someone I can understand: a sister or a brother.

The creation of a cohesive, easily malleable group of people is the aim of  governments. To reach this goal, the divisive stony Decalogue of monotheistic religion must give way to the inclusive soggy ukase of the nanny state,  of adamantine hardness.

The governmental insistence on “diversity” is interesting, because it is self-contradictory. The diversity of a Muslim, or a Catholic does not accept the diversity of someone who practises homosexual sex. The diversity of a practising homosexual does not accept the diversity of a someone who states that such acts are against the natural law. Clearly diversity must pertain only to the cultural, not ethical, because ethical diversity raises too many problems. It must therefore be eliminated.

So what is the solution for those in authority?

Among the methods used  to erode ethical or religious diversity is ambiguity or imprecision. Nothing is right or wrong, but simply acceptable or unacceptable – but to whom? They word “culture” is used to cover religion, morality, dress, the arts, food – the list is long. This recourse to ambiguity is used not only by civil governments, but sometimes also by religious authorities. The ARCIC documents are an example. The old I.C.E.L. translation of the Mass, for example, used the phrase (of the bread before consecration) “it will become for us the Body of Christ”.

What do these words mean? Does “for us” mean “for our sake”, as in “my parents did a lot for me?”, or “in our opinion”, as in “for me, music is the greatest of the arts” - only for us, not for everyone? There is no ambiguity in the Latin, but I am not so sure that there was no vagueness in the minds of the translators. The books used twenty years ago in the preparation of my children for first Holy Communion avoided the divisive doctrine of Transubstantiation altogether. My parish priest in England when I asked him about this told me that my understanding of the Sacrament was too crude. “We have moved forward from all that”. Another weasel phrase – why do we always move forward, never sideways or backwards? Is theology also subject to Darwinian evolution, so that later is always better?

And what have we moved forward from? From plain speaking to anodyne obfuscation.

VERITAS IN CARITATE - truth in charity - is a fine motto. Truth curtailed by a desire to be tactful, or accepted, is not so fine. If no one knows what anyone means, no reasonable discourse is possible. Terms cannot be defined and no one can agree or disagree.