Irish Examiner: Catholic liberals are facing some hard choices

WHAT a surprise... it wasn’t a surprise. God’s Rottweiler has become God’s German Shepherd. The man who went in as Pope has come out as Pope.

Benedict is the only Pope who was wanted by believers and non-believers alike.

Believers wanted him because he would maintain ultra-conservative traditional family values and give those liberals a well deserved kicking. Non-believers wanted him for the exact same reason in the hope that he will scare the daylights out of moderates, make them leave the church in disgust and add to the growing numbers of non-believers.

The only people who didn’t want Cardinal Ratzinger were those wishy-washy Catholic liberals who were vainly hoping that somehow the next Pope would be a bit more flexible.

It is hard to fathom how Catholic liberals can be so ignorant of their own religion as to believe that the Vatican would allow what it sees as the moral deviance of women priests, divorce, homosexuality and contraception to become part of Catholic doctrine.

Catholic liberals delude themselves that their church is an inclusive democracy with beliefs that can be changed to suit whatever fad is currently in vogue.

If that were true, Catholicism would become nothing more than a fluffy pseudo religion, where everything was permitted and nothing prohibited. Liberals don’t want a proper religion. What they want is a non-judgemental, airy-fairy folk religion which has as much substance as a hot-air balloon.

Catholic liberals have prayed to their God for a liberal Pope, and their God gave them a conservative. Perhaps their God is telling them something. Perhaps they should listen and obey, or just go away.

Catholic liberals are an oxymoron, like environmentalists in favour of nuclear power, socialists in favour of privatisation or monarchists in favour of a republic. They claim to be Catholics and yet publicly disagree with every single one of the church’s moral teachings.

Jason FitzHarris
Rivervalley
Swords
Co Dublin