A very narrow idea of freedom
Maybe all this talk of the actual science of what the Bill entails has distracted me from the issue at hand: Should MPs have a free vote or not?
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, became the most senior church figure to call on Mr Brown to sanction a free “conscience” vote of MPs on the Bill.
“Certainly, there are some aspects of this Bill on which I believe there ought to be a free vote, because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience. I don’t think it should be subject to the party whip.”
That seems reasonable. After all, punishing MPs for voting with their conscience would be unreasonable, right Cardinals? Wait, what’s that internet? We have a quote from an article last year where the church suggested rather heavily that they might deny communion to any Catholic MPs who stepped away from the party church line?
In his sermon the Cardinal, Scotland’s most senior Catholic, said politicians who support abortion should be aware of the “barrier such co-operation creates to receiving Holy Communion” but after the Mass he would not say whether he meant that Catholic politicians who back abortion should be cast out from the Church. “I’m not going to say whether or not those who are involved in any way in helping or aiding abortion can approach the altar to receive Holy Communion. It’s not up to me to judge them, I’ll leave that to God to judge them.”
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, added his support to Cardinal O’Brien, urging all Catholics “especially those who hold positions of public responsibility” to educate themselves about the Church’s prohibition on abortion so that they could make decisions “with consistency and integrity”.
It seems to me that instead of being a triumph of the will of democracy over party politics, a free vote seems to mean that the party whips step back so the church whips can step forward. Or is that too cynical?
And in related news: James Graham draws my attention to an article by the good cardinal telling atheists they’re heartless meanies who are incapable of love, which is incidentally why our soulless secular solutions haven’t found the solution to the HIV problem in Africa: They need more love! I know, I know, I would have thought a constructive role for the church might be more telling people that using condoms doesn’t damn them for eternity or, at the very least, to stop telling people that condoms are deliberately infected with it, but I think we’ll have to defer to his wisdom on this one.
