Apart from the obscene misrepresentation that results from treating secularists and nihilists as the same, I find the charge of, "allowing the powerful to take advantage of the defenseless," a particularly interesting one when coming from a European Catholic bishop.
I feel little sympathy. At the heart of this, in my opinion, is not a particular understanding of or care about the issues the church's leaders regularly talk about. That much is obvious from the lack of understanding people like this Bishop exhibit every time they talk about the issues.
Firstly, His Eminence will have difficulty finding people who are particularly enthusiastic about abortion itself. He will, however, find millions who reservedly accept the fact that in an imperfect world there are occasions on which abortion is the lesser of two evils. He will find people who say that it is not for ageing, wealthy celibates separate in every way from the realities of most people's lives to tell half the world's population in one fell swoop that, whether or not their very life depends on it, they cannot have an abortion. That is the powerful taking advantage of the defenceless.
Euthanasia, despite what some Catholic leaders would have us believe, is not about eugenics and does not lead to such. It is not involuntary. As someone who believes euthanasia with several conditions should be legalised, I can tell you that anyone, no matter how desperate their situation, who was not of sound mind or didn't want assisted suicide, must be given the absolute best loving palliative care possible. However, with the consent of the patient and his/her doctors, voluntary euthanasia has nothing to do with the powerful taking advantage of the defenceless. It is about them giving the weak the choice to take control of their own life and, yes, death.
Stem cell research, if it involves the killing of embryos is, in my opinion, regretable. I think it is important we try to get this research done without the need to kill embryos. However, I think a consideration far more intelligent than the bishop's will show that the life of a human being that could be saved by this research is, if it is absolutely necessary, more important than that of a being that lacks the basic features of life.
Same-sex marriage is not about destroying marriage between a man and a woman. I find the charge absurd, especially coming from a man who has never been married, and never will be.
No, this isn't about the issues themselves. It is about power. The Church can no longer use fear and stupidity to get what it wants. Even a significant proportion, if not most, of the 1 billion that call themselves Catholic, are more than willing to ignore, overlook and expressly violate Catholic teaching.*
The people of the modern world are no longer going to accept top-down power-crazed hierarchical authority interfering in their private lives. The Church can no longer control even its own priests, who being out in the world instead of locked up behind closed doors in Rome, are the everyday heroes of Catholicism. They cannot sit and shout tired old dogmas that have nothing to do with real life, because, unlike most of the higher-ups, they actually know what life is like for the common people.
The hierarchy is going to have to adapt or die, and they're just whinging about it.
*not a reference to anyone on CF.
Catholicism must be satanism because we have a respectful title for our clergy.
