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.

Skew me, skew you.

I'm on a mailing list that doesn't generate much traffic most of the time, but when it does, debates tend to be heated. I'm usually the advocatus diaboli on the list, since most readers and posters write from a rather anti-establishment point of view. Today Mike kindly informed us of a boycott that's being agitated against ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Kraft, et alia, by the Finnish chapter of the Friends of the Earth network.

As a firm believer in the power of markets as an instrument of social change, I generally back the idea of boycotting or campaigning against companies that are known for their unethical practices in foreign markets, or unequal treatment of homosexual couples, just to give a few examples. I buy my petrol from Neste, and will take an organic product over a global brand anytime, but I find this current campaign completely misguided.

To confuse a company, several companies, or in this particular case those companies that support the Bush re-election campaign (or in the case of the international campaing, just US companies in general!), with the government that is executing its policies in Iraq, is plain astigmatism. Such confusion only serves to display how distorted views are becoming on the East side of the Atlantic; how little understanding there is of the state of the nation that is the United States of America, here. Thinking that 'America' is monolithic is the same non sequitur some on the political left claim the US government commits when allegedly viewing the Islamic world as one singular enemy.

Sure, our good 'Friends' may pay lip service to the noble ideal of being anti-anti-American, but in a media environment where al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya can pin their islamofascist, anti-American and anti-Iraq views on, and I quote, mistranslation, words are cheap.