The regime of compulsory tolerance

I recently appeared on BBC Sunday morning live to discuss whether it is time to legalise Euthanasia in the UK.  My fellow panellist was Andrew Copson, head of the Humanists, a group that has been campaigning for the right to poison humans for over 100 years. Just another group in a growing field of advocacy groups whose slogans are more Orwell and less Ronseal. The racist antiracists, the intolerant tolerators, the tyrannical liberals, the slumbering woke – it does what it doesn’t say on the tin.

During the show, the head humanist used the phrase “It’s a miracle really” when referring to modern medicine.

While the humanist speaks of miracles, the Orwellian Ministry of God can be found churning out all things human.  War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength and Sin is Good.

On Thursday 15th February, when the Church had entered her most solemn season, St Patricks Cathedral in New York City hosted a jubilant funeral for Cecilia Gentili, a male, transgender sex worker, actor and self-proclaimed atheist.

The funeral service ‘opened’ with a perversion of the Lord’s Prayer, Mass cards and a picture near the altar depicted a haloed Cecilia surrounded by the Spanish words for transvestite, whore, blessed and mother.

“This whore” one guest proclaimed from the lectern, to whoops and cheers from the mourners, “This great whore, Saint Cecilia, mother of all whores”.

Years of Pope Francis’ pastoral approach and this is what we have. What has been happening at the margins that means these broken people see nothing wrong with behaving this way in a sacred place?

“Our regime of compulsory tolerance and non-judgementalism” Professor of Philosophy Ed Feser declared “gives courage to depraved men and makes cowards of good men” and “The cowardly shepherds” Bishop Strickland remarked “are feeding the sheep to the wolves.”

When the nails were hammered into Jesus’ flesh and the crown of thorns pressed deep into His skin, there were those then (as now) who laughed and jeered, mocked and spat, unaware that each lash He bore was for love of them. In that moment, the penitent thief recognised both his own sin and the self-sacrificial love of Christ – it was in response to this that Jesus said to him “Today, you will be with me in Paradise”.  

Raves at Cathedrals, celebrations of pride, blessing of sin are all part of the sickness that needs to be healed. Yes, the Church is a field hospital and the healthy do not need a doctor, but if the only hospital and staff available are from the set of Grey’s Anatomy how useful is that going to be to the bloke mangled in a road traffic accident?

For many people, including some clergy, Christianity is nothing more than a useful shopfront to cover their own sinful ambition or ideological position. Like the drug dealing dry cleaners, they have to wash a few shirts just to avoid suspicion. The Christian school governors who deceive children, the vicars of Christ who abuse Gods little ones, the Catholics who speak of love for all but hate their own holy mother, the nationalists who promote Christian principles as a means to some worldly end, the ‘be nice’ brigade who preach a Christless Christianity and the homosexual activists who metastasise mercy for their own purposes.

If God is not real, it doesn’t really matter.  Jesus is a useful figure, as long as no one looks too closely.

But, what if God is real? What if there really is something more than the material?

Then we run into real problems. 

Suddenly the blessing of sin, the prayers for access to gender affirming healthcare, the use of the holy to celebrate all that is unholy, the mocking of the saints and the ridicule of Our Lady will call upon some supernatural power, but it won’t be God.  We see what happened to one of the first Bishops of the Church who betrayed Christ while breaking bread with Him “As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered him” Jn 13:27

Anyone who truly believes knows that we cannot afford to be indifferent. What the people assembling for Cecilia Gentili’s funeral needed, what we all need, is a real hospital, with a real physician who can heal, so that (like the wise men) nobody leaves the same way that they came. To offer anything less is a failure. We can and must meet people where they are, but we cannot and must not fail them by leaving them there.