UK Society ‘Post-Christian’?

Glasgow — The archbishop of Glasgow has warned that if the government  continues to ignore the wisdom of generations, then society will further descend  into “ethical confusion and moral disintegration.”

Archbishop Mario Conti went on to warn that religion is being driven from the  U.K. public sphere by a new form of secularist tyranny.

Archbishop Conti was speaking at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, in the  presence of all Scotland’s Catholic bishops, representatives of civil and public  life, and the apostolic nuncio to the U.K., Archbishop Antonio Mennini, during a  special Mass to mark the seventh anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict  XVI.

Asking what society — “now in many respects post-Christian” — expects of the  law, he said it is “certainly not the role of law to re-create our society  according to passing fashions and ideologies, nor to redefine nature, whether in  terms of persons and their rights or its natural institutions.”

“We live in a culture of human rights which appear to be ever more in need  of codification and protection,” he said. “And I wonder why; I do not think  society of itself ought to be more needful than before law and laws, unless, of  course, we can no longer rely on the generality of citizens to act virtuously  and according to conscience.”

Referring to the words of Pope Benedict at Westminster Hall during his U.K.  visit, when he said that some people wished to deny a religious voice in the  public sphere, Archbishop Conti said, “One cannot help remark that those voices  are growing ever louder in our country, that attempted marginalization is  becoming ever more acute, and we are witnessing the transformation of tolerance  into a kind of tyranny in which religious views are the only ones which seem  unworthy of respect and acceptance.”

He continued, “Governments which fail to take into account the wisdom that is  handed down generation to generation in communities of faith or fail to  underscore the right and duty of following informed conscience on the part of  citizens will, it seems, inevitably find themselves attempting to be wise by  creating ever more legislation and requiring judges to interpret it according to  the mores of the day.”

In such a climate, the archbishop suggested that it is hardly surprising that  the authorities “seem ready to redefine marriage without any reference to  children or to the natural law written on the heart of mankind, putting the  claim of ‘equality and diversity’ on a higher level than faith and reason and,  ultimately, asserting the moral equivalence between marriage and same-sex  unions, contrary to the virtue of chastity.”

He concluded, “Our society will descend further into ethical confusion and  moral disintegration the more that those in government and the judiciary slip  society’s moorings from the capstans of virtue.”

The above was here.

 

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