Daily Loaf

Why won't the Holy see?

On very select occasions does organised religion affect my life; at birth, when friends get married, at my sister's communion, when a close relative dies. I don't dislike strongly religious people, but I can't say I like some of the organisations they belong to, either. Every now and then, though, some of them cross the line.

Just a few months ago, I was, along with all other homosexual men and women, categorically condemned by the Holy See as having "no social value". My heterosexual compatriots, for allowing gay marriage, were deemed to have "profoundly disordered minds." The man behind this attack was His Eminence Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, secretary of the Vatican's Council for Family.

No rest for the weary and oppressed: now it's time for the Pope's right hand (and whole brain), Grand Inquisitor Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to brandish his sword of gay bashing and homophobia. On Thursday the Vatican will publish a document that will instruct the faithful on how to oppose gay unions.

Cardinal Ratzinger is a well-known opposer of homosexuality - but he is equally opposed to all other forms of free sexuality. It's a natural reaction to the dire situation in which the Catholic church finds itself. Having lost control of all other secular aspects in the lives of Christians the world over, this church now desperately clings on to what's left of its former might. In doing so, it will lose even these vestiges.

The Vatican opposes birth control, abortion and divorce, too. And yet in the most populous of Catholic nations, Brazil, all three are commonly practiced by Catholics and Protestants alike - but the numbers of the former are decreasing, only to swell the ranks of the latter. Italy has one of the lowest natality rates in the world - no thanks to abstinence. Ireland, bastion of conservative Catholicism, legalised divorce in 1997. The Catholic empire is slowly crumbling at the heart, and the world will be a better place for it. Opposing homosexuality, counter to all other developments that have taken place in the opposite direction, will only serve to alienate more people away from the mother church.

What's more, the document, which is aimed (according to yesterday's La Repubblica) heavily at Catholic politicians, may end up estranging it's very target audience. Politicians can guard their turf quite aggressively, as witnessed by recent events in Russia. Expect demands for total separation of Church and State to rise.