Steven Mulvain, a 23-year-old employee of Britain’s Foreign Office, sent an e-mail memo to Downing Street and other government offices saying that when Pope Benedict XVI visits England in September it would be “ideal” for him to open an abortion clinic, bless gay marriage and introduce a “Benedict” brand of condoms; there were other suggestions of a similar nature. Though the Foreign Office issued an apology, the guilty Oxford graduate was merely transferred to another office.
The Brits are bigger hypocrites than their like-minded liberal Americans. Back when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, a law known as Section 28 was passed banning government funds from being used to support homosexual families, declaring lesbian liaisons to be “pretend” families. Now Tory leaders are scrambling to apologize for Section 28, boasting how gay-friendly their party has become.
Similarly, two years ago, the British government renamed Islamic terrorism “anti-Islamic activity,” maintaining that not only is there no such thing as Islamic terrorism, all such violence is really anti-Islamic. Yet when it comes to government officials who insult the pope, no punitive sanctions are taken─he is simply shuffled from one office to another.
Following the logic of the British government with regard to Muslims, they should declare all cases of priestly sexual abuse to be “anti-Catholic activity.” But we Catholics have no reason to believe that we will ever achieve parity with Muslims. Maybe that’s because we are too nice.
