a little self-administered cyanide never hurt anybody

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jul 07, 2005

"Politics affords few greater pleasures," wrote Mark Steyn, "than offering one's opponents some friendly but hopefully lethal piece of advice." Alarmed by reports that European Catholics are adopting some political tactics borrowed from Christian Coalition in the U.S., the NCR amuses itself with some ill counsel in a recent editorial:

There are worrying elements to this European Catholic reawakening, if that's what it is, that need to be addressed before they become irreversible. American Catholics may be forgiven the presumption of offering advice, because in some ways, we've seen it all before. Most important, it would be a serious mistake for European Catholic activists to mimic the rise of the "religious right" in the United States, which essentially wedded the "religious vote" to the Republican Party. The result is that "faith and values" as a political force in the United States has come to be tightly identified with conservative positions on a handful of hot-button cultural issues -- especially abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research. The result has been "religion" fit for bumper sticker declarations and TV sound bites.

Now of course the NCR crowd is opposed to this "wedding" not because it might fail but because it might succeed. Having done their level best to torpedo Catholic doctrine on abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research on the home front, they're attempting to feign solicitude for those Europeans who are taking their first tentative steps at fighting secularism and restoring a social order in conformity to Church teaching. And after all, the more secular/atheist the European state -- think Sweden, Holland, France -- the more complete its implementation of what the NCR means by social justice. Small wonder then, that the counsel they offer our transatlantic cousins would, if accepted, make their Catholicism politically toothless and inert. Freshen-up that Koolaid, senorita?