1In this astonishing letter addressed to the Queen's Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet, a letter that purports to come from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and is published on his Web site, we read the following appalling example of submission to the “Secularist compromise”: “Catholic adoption agencies welcome adoptive applicants from any or no religious background. [Two persons who habitually and unrepentantly commit sexual assault] are referred to other agencies where their adoption application may be considered. This ‘sign-posting’ responsibility is taken very seriously by all Catholic adoption agencies”.

This subsequent announcement on the Cardinal's Web site further suggests the need to pray for his conversion to the Catholic Faith (2/2/07). (It should be noted that a non-Catholic prelate of the Catholic Church is no less plausible than a republican Queen's prime minister.) Only in the notes to the statement is a truly Catholic position articulated: “[I]t is, however, worth bearing in mind that the Church . . . refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God”. If the rest of the statement had actually borne this in mind it would have remained within the realms of truth. As it is, the entire announcement appears to constitute an attempt to overlay the reality of existence with a Second Reality – that of the “homosexual” person.

It has been argued elsewhere on this site that the word “homosexual” should not be employed by Catholics because it is in its origins and general purpose a propaganda term designed to beg the question about whether there is such a thing as a third sex (other than male and female). Where the Cardinal's statement refers to a “homosexual inclination”, this can be translated as, a “temptation to commit sodomy”. When the terms are clarified thus, analogies can readily be drawn with the idea of celebrating special Masses for persons who are tempted to commit adultery or fornication in general, or to break any other specified Commandment (as opposed to sinners in general). It can readily be foreseen that such an idea could have the dangerous effect of bringing people together for all the wrong reasons, and thus committing the sacrilege of making the Mass itself an occasion of sin.

2As an example, in his journal entry for 29/9/06 on his Web site, First Things, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus comments, “The great majority of Muslims are not going to stop being religious, and the religion to which they adhere is Islam. . . . [I]f Jihadist theology is to be countered effectively, it must be countered by religious authority and argument within Islam”. How can Fr. Neuhaus possibly believe this, when any Catholic must recognise that the Mohammedan system of belief is patently false? Take the following Koranic view of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity: “And they say: The Beneficent God has taken (to Himself) a son. Certainly you have made an abominable assertion The heavens may almost be rent thereat, and the earth cleave asunder, and the mountains fall down in pieces, That they ascribe a son to the Beneficent God” (Surah 19:88 et seq.). The logical principle of non-contradiction makes it impossible that the Christian and the Mohammedan accounts of God could both be correct. The only way, therefore, that Fr. Neuhaus' “pragmatism” could succeed in practice is if the various peoples that currently adhere to the religion of Mohammed can be expected to argue cogently, on the basis of a belief system that is out of step with reality, that jihadists are wrong. This result can only be achieved through psychology, in place of honest, logical debate. Such a method is far from being compatible with love of God and neighbour.