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	Who Really Can Lecture on Morality? Inverness Courier March 28, 2008 http://bishop-accountability.org/news2008/list/tracker2008_03_04.htm I'M not a gambling Mann. It's never floated my boat. My parents didn't gamble either, apart from the annual ritual of a half-crown on whatever took our collective family fancy in the Grand National. As for himself — he's just too tight to give money to bookmakers. A few years back we went on a family holiday which took in Las Vegas. Naturally we visited Caesar's Palace to show the kids what real glitz is. We put a single symbolic dollar in a fruit machine, duly lost it as expected and spent the rest of the afternoon watching other people losing their money (and very occasionally winning some) on the fruit machines, tables and race-day videos. So it doesn't put me up nor down that bookmakers were allowed to open on Good Friday this year for the first time ever. What does tee me off is that the leaders of the Catholic Church should insist that bookies stay shut on Good Friday. Why? There are good arguments, of course, for not allowing gambling at all. But that wasn't the Church's point. Its point was that Good Friday is a Holy Day. Well, actually, Good Friday isn't a Holy Day for me. And it isn't a Holy Day for the other 27 per cent of the population who have no religious affiliation — not to mention the numbers who adhere to non-Christian faiths. If the Catholic Church wants to insist that its adherents shouldn't gamble on their Holy Day, I'd have no quibble. All it needs to do is announce it from the pulpit. That should keep good Catholics out of the bookies'. But the idea that a Church which represents a mere 16 per cent of the population should dictate to the rest of us how we live our lives is absurd. This week Cardinal Keith O'Brien, a leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, has stepped much further into politics. He's forced Gordon Brown into conceding a "free vote" on the Bill which would allow research towards finding a cure for some of the nastiest afflictions people have to bear. His objection is predicated on the view that the technology involved, taking an animal egg and substituting its DNA with human DNA containing the precursors for the affliction being studied, violates the sanctity of human life. Others — including many mainstream Christians — see the sanctity of life for the thousands who'd otherwise be stricken as just a little more important. They may have Christ's well-documented concern for the sick and afflicted at the forefront of their minds. For while Christ was silent on issues like embryo research he had plenty to say about the importance of curing people's afflictions. It may sound reasonable to allow a "free vote". But the good cardinal is not telling MPs, "vote whatever way you like." Quite the reverse. The cardinal's position is that he, the unelected leader of a minority religion, should have the right to tell Labour MPs which way to vote — not the elected government of this country. I've got a deal for the cardinal. How about we go ahead with the research. When a cure is found the cardinal could urge his faithful not to avail themselves of it. There is absolutely no reason why the leader of any faith should dictate to the rest of us the cures we can and cannot have. To what extent should the Church, any Church, determine national policy? Gordon Brown appears to be conceding that, on issues of morality, minority Churches' views should hold sway. Other issues can be left to democratically elected politicians. That is, effectively, a call for the UK to be governed under a Christian form of Sharia Law, just as the Anglican Archbishop of Canter-bury seemed to be suggesting a while back. The idea that a Church which colluded by its silence in the sexual abuse of small children carried out by its own "celibate" priests should lecture the rest of us on morality is ridiculous. That Gordon Brown should go along with this nonsense is worse.
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