No, not the pope, silly. I'm talking about a functionary in the Westminster archdiocesan curia who spoke out candidly about England's serious social and cultural problems.
After reading this article, my first thought was that, to whatever extent what he said may be true (and much of it probably is), it would have been much wiser to have refrained from saying this until after Pope Benedict's visit to the UK in two weeks. This will only make the pope's already difficult work there even more difficult.
Edmund Adamus, an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster, said five decades of liberalising abortion and gay rights laws had made Britain more anti-Catholic than countries where Christians can be subjected to violent persecution.The director of pastoral affairs in the diocese of Westminster blamed Parliament for allowing the country to become "the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death." Mr Adamus told Zenit, a Catholic news agency: "Whether we like it or not, as British citizens and residents of this country ... Britain, and in particular London, has been and is the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death." The expression "culture of death", first used by John Paul II, is often used to refer to liberal policies on abortion and euthanasia.He added that Parliament over the last 50 years had been "the most permissively anti-life and progressively anti-family and marriage, in essence one of the most anti-Catholic landscapes, culturally speaking – more even than those places where Catholics suffer open persecution."Speaking about marriage and gender roles, he said Catholics should "exhibit counter-cultural signals against the selfish, hedonistic wasteland that is the objectification of women for sexual gratification."He said "permissive laws advancing the 'gay' agenda" were one example of how Britain had become such a "wasteland." . . . (continue reading)
