Cardinal had liberal reputation until man who would be pope made him toe line.
There
must be glee in Stonewall today.
Set up in 1989 to promote equal rights
for gay people it awarded Cardinal Keith O’Brien its Bigot of the Year
Award last November for his attacks on proposals to legalise same-sex
marriage.
In an article for the Daily Telegraph last March the
cardinal said civil partnerships involving gay people were “harmful to
the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved” while
“the repercussions of enacting same-sex marriage into law will be
immense”.
He bemoanded that politicians were not “derided” when
they suggested “jettisoning the established understanding of marriage
and subverting its meaning.”
Instead, he continued, “their attempt to
redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their madness is indulged”.
He
said same-sex marriage “would create a society which deliberately
chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father” and accused
the British government in the context of being “staggeringly arrogant.
No government, he pointed out “has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage.”
Later
he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if same-sex marriage were
legalised, “further aberrations would take place and society would be
degenerating even further than it already has into immorality”.
Yet
Cardinal O’Brien had in the past been regarded as particularly
compassionate where gay people, incuding gay priests, were concerned. He
even chastised colleague Bishop Joseph Devine for suggesting that
homosexuals should not be allowed teach in Catholic schools. So what
happened?
Perhaps a clue lies in an article for The Irish Times by
a priest of the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh in May 2005, a
month after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.
Fr
Steve Gilhooley wrote: “In 2003 my archbishop, Keith O'Brien, was made
cardinal. In interviews he was asked about the role of women,
contraception and homosexuals. He said he wished to see a church which
was open to discussion. Cardinal Ratzinger was reported to be
‘incandescent’.
“He summoned the papal pro-nuncio of Britain in
order to stop the archbishop becoming cardinal. By Canon Law this could
not be done. He forced Cardinal-elect O’Brien to make a humiliating
retraction/ profession of faith.”
The sudden resignation of
Cardinal O’Brien and particularly its context may add a certain piquancy
to the delight of his critics but it is at once a personal tragedy,
however true or otherwise the allegations, and a serious embarrassment
to the Catholic Church in Scotland.
It is a minority church in what has
not always been a warm environment.
Cardinal O’Brien received a
live bullet in the post before the pope visited Scotland in 2010. A note
with it, from the “Protestant Action Force”, said he would be shot if
the pope arrived.
With just eight dioceses and 667,017 faithful out of
5.16 million Scots, most of its adherents are descended from Irish
emigrants.
Cardinal O’Brien is one such. He was born in
Ballycastle, Co Antrim on St Patrick’s Day 1938, when he was christened
Keith Michael Patrick OBrien. He attended primary school there before
his family moved to Scotland where his father served with the royal
navy.
As with Pope Benedict, it is likely his ministry too will now be remembered for the manner of his leaving it.