Monday, September 03, 2012

A depressing Monday...

...although September is my favourite month, and there are lots of good things happening in it this year.  I dislike hot weather, and the Autumn invariably brings joy. I love the cool mornings and the feeling of things bustling again as long hot days end and schools return and social groups meet again. Even clothes are nicer as people stop trying to squeeze themselves into tiny tight ugly things, and start to cover up: skirts, jackets, dresses, reappear.

But as the summer ends, the politicking starts anew with vigour. It is so very depressing watching our country slither into social misery. The long drawn-out dreariness as the politicians wreck our laws, destroy the heritage of generations, and attempt to redefine marriage is horrid to watch. Of course we must fight on to protect human values, and we'll do so: Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien is magnificent in this weekend's Mail on Sunday.

1 comment:

June Courage said...

I'm writing in response both to this blog, and the one you posted on the EWTN site, where, as here, you paint such a negative view of contemporary Britain, remarking that 'modern Britain can be very ugly'. This mind, during the summer when the Olympics and Paralympics has shown the UK as more diverse yet unified in our core values than ever before.But nothing from you about any of the positive things the games produced: co-operation, generosity (all those volunteers) real cultural diversity and the tolerance which underwites it; pride in the way we pioneered the paralympics and its support for the disabled, the creativity,imagination, and deep pride in human achievement which we saw celebrated in the opening cermonies of both games; the emphasis on hostpitality, and on the coming together of the peoples of the world. No, for you Britain is just 'ugly'.
Well, that's your opinion, and, though I pity the paucity of your vision, you are entitled to it.
What, as a practicing Catholic and an historian you are not entitled to do, is lie.
For a Catholic, to lie is to sin.For an historian it is the betrayal of the core values of their profession.
Yet you lied. In the blog posted on the EWTN site you claimed that in the UK there was 'a lessening of religious freedom' and also 'more and more pressure to legalise the killing of the frail and sick.'
Now, its not enough to say that neither of these statements are true, that would be prevarication: for the truth is, they are lies.
The facts are that it was only in the past couple of weeks that a teminally ill man desperate to put an end to his OWN life (not anybody else's) was REFUSED permission to do so by the High Court. Within the same period,sermons were preached throughout Scotland against gay mariage. How can you then make the claim that there is any 'pressure' at all to legalise the killing of the frail or sick'? Or that religious freedom has been in any way lessened ? These claims are not simply hysterically innacurate, but downright false, and I challenge you to either withdraw or substantiate them.