baldysblog.co.uk

Recently Tony Blair gave an interview to a gay magazine called Attitude and ever the populist decided to challenge the Pope’s “entrenched attitudes” on homosexuality. This is of course as banal an assertion as any fool can make considering whatever views the current Pope has are built upon some 2,000 years worth of thinking.

As a Catholic, I despaired of getting this fool as a convert especially as he was not a brave one having deferred his ‘conversion’ until after he left the Office of PM because “People might think me nuts if I did it whilst in Office…” Clearly no candidate for martyrdom any time soon !

Blair is an Idiot…

The main problem with what Blair said is that he is looking at religion the same as a political party, his aim is to find a “Catholic Third Way” – Lord preserve us all from muddle class brainless clowns who think it is all “pick and mix”. For them life is like a tin of Quality Street where there are some chocolates they like and others they don’t – tough you have still to buy the whole tin Tony.

If the man was not happy with the teachings of the Church, why did he join it ?

Religion is ‘optional’ not mandatory and if you don’t like the Rule Book, don’t join. If you do join then you play by those rules which would have been explained to you in some detail.

It makes no difference whether Blair wants to challenge Catholic Doctrine over the Virgin Birth, Holy Trinity, Contraception, Homosexuality, transubstantiation or any other issue. If its a problem for him, fine so GO ! Blair is being totally arrogant in lecturing the Pope, Blair couldn’t even read a Security Briefing on Iraq properly, so Scripture will be well beyond him.

Other People’s comments

Particularly with “Holy Smoke” in the DT, the blogs have been quite lively with lots of interesting comments by people of faith and none. One particular writer raised some interesting points particularly in saying that as things had moved on:

“Understanding of sexuality has developed significantly over recent decades and it seems appropriate for the Church to open to a debate about how (or if) those developments affect our understanding of Christian doctrine.”

My Reply

If you were writing about say technology of some kind, flying, space travel, I would agree that; “Understanding of microchips has developed significantly over recent decades”

However, I am not aware of any major changes in “Jiggy-Jiggy” which seems to have been settled at some stage when we emerged from the Primeval Soup. The bi-sexual practices of the Ancient World, Alexander the Great was not exactly a “straight kind of guy”, would seem to indicate that mankind has long been aware of homosexuality and sex for pleasure. This is rather underlined by ancient carvings in India too and of course we all know what the “Oldest Profession” is.

I am not poking fun at you but there is a serious point here. What has changed and constantly changes over time are the acceptable fashions and social mores of each age. Following Cromwell and a Puritan period came the Restoration which was the exact opposite, a sexual romp.

Sadly perhaps, if we strip away our technology, can we truly say that we as a society are any more evolved spiritually and intellectually as say 500 or 900 years ago ? It is in this context then that we need to examine religion not because of its “fashion” but because of its fundamental principles.

In due time the Catholic Church may well soften its approach to women clergy and homosexual relationships but that might be in a 100 years or so because these are not major doctrinal issues and Blair has no influence on the Pope any more than he does on the Labour Party.

Finally:

A question that occurs to me is: If Tony Blair converted to Islam would he say, “Jolly good Bacon Butties on me chaps !” Or if he became a Hindu, “Roast Beef salads all round…”