THE
P RTAL
October 2017
Page 24
Are practising
Catholics welcome
in public life?
Geoffrey Kirk watched that Jacob Rees-Mogg
interview on breakfast TV
M ost members
of the Ordinariate – and not especially the clergy – will at some time or other
have been accused of being a misogynist. What the accuser will have meant, of course, is not that we
habitually beat our wives, and have consigned our elderly mothers to a lunatic asylum, but simply that we
disagreed with them, on theological grounds, about the ordination of women.
Because we refused to countenance an innovation
which had no warranty in Scriptures or the Tradition,
we were taken to be bigots, fired by an irrational hatred
of the entire sex.
If you have been there – had that experience – then
spare a thought for Jacob Rees-Mogg, who bravely (on
breakfast television!) defended the Church’s teaching
on marriage and abortion.
And consider the implications of the outrage that
followed. Not only was Mogg accused of being a ‘bigot’,
but said to be, as a result of those opinions, ineligible
for a role in public life.
Now Jacob is the very model of a modest English
gentleman, cool, rational, articulate and gently
humorous. Piers Morgan (a catholic in wolf ’s clothing)
pressed him relentlessly toward an extreme position.
Mogg – you can watch it again on U-Tube - went no
further than saying that he unequivocally accepted the
teaching of the Catholic Church. He condemned no
one and denounced nothing.
And as he did so he was accused of ‘hiding behind’
the Church’s teaching.
The implications of that claim are monstrous. They
are that, far from upholding the catholic teaching out of
loyalty to scripture and fidelity to the tradition, he was
covertly an ardent queer basher, who as soon as soon
as he had any semblance of power, would condemn
every girl who had an abortion to a stiff sentence in
prison.
You will ask yourself why an interviewer like
Morgan behaves in this outrageous and unacceptable
manner. The answer must surely be that the members
of Protestant hatred of the Church have never died
away, and that a new political correctness has fanned
them into flame once more. Morgan’s intent was no
doubt to end Rees-Mogg’s political career as decisively
as a similar interviewer had ended that of poor Tim
Farron.
But this time the gentleman won.