on parade

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jun 09, 2008

Rome was the scene of another gay pride parade on Saturday. It was over-reported, as usual, the sympathies of journalists and editors having overmastered their professional objectivity. As usual, hatred and ridicule of the Church was a chief theme of the festivities, which the media treated with amused indulgence.

By what may seem historical accident, as other defenders of Judeo-Christian morality fade into the inert secular background, the Catholic Church assumes a more prominent combatant role in the culture wars. There is no new belligerence on the Church's part; simply by standing pat and holding on to those moral truths she once shared with Protestants and Jews (and indeed many pagans), her position as a nay-sayer becomes progressively more isolated -- and as it becomes more isolated it becomes more obnoxious to the innovators. These innovators would have us believe they've been singled out for ill-treatment by the Church; in fact they're projecting their own antagonism onto the figure that persists in standing in their way.

To be gay, inter alia, is to be anti-Catholic, just as to be pro-abortion is to be anti-Catholic. The conflict is a matter of first principles, and no amount of lawyering can effect a reconciliation. True, there are gays and pro-aborts who also claim to be Catholic, but the gentlest questioning reveals they're using "Catholic" in some distorted private sense. The non-stop shriek of rage that serves as the obbligato for the "pride" and "choice" parades is a more candid expression of conviction (we're talking about declarations, not appetites) than those furry op-eds pretending to seek a co-existence treaty between Catholic teaching and its negation.

The upshot is that, while the image of Benedict as a reptilian horned Hitler may be dismaying to Catholics, it's an indication that the pope is doing his job and that the Church over which he presides is doing hers. It means the players are in position. Were it to happen that your local transgendered performance artist (and his spiritual director) ceased to hang the pope in effigy, then you'd have cause for concern.