Tag Archives: moral relativism

Swinging seventies

It's Holy Week, so here's a post about religion–Catholicism in particular.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been busy campaigning against Health Insurance Reform, dishonestly claiming that somehow despite severe restrictions, abortions might be covered.  Reason enough to trash the whole thing. 

Now comes of course another scandal, brought about no doubt by liberals attempting to destroy the Catholic Church.  Not only have liberals been circling like buzzards above the latest priest-abuse (that's now an adjective, like "school shooting") scandal, they also, you see, had a hand in producing it.  That's how ingenious this whole thing is. 

Here's Ross Douthat, op-ed columnist for the New York Times:

This hasn’t prevented both sides in the Catholic culture war from claiming that the scandal vindicates their respective vision of the church. Liberal Catholics, echoed by the secular press, insist that the whole problem can be traced to clerical celibacy. Conservatives blame the moral relativism that swept the church in the upheavals of the 1970s, when the worst abuses and cover-ups took place.

In the first place, conservatives don't blame "moral relativism," they blame (wrongly) homosexuals (and the phenomenon of homosexuality).  One might raise serious questions about the rate of the abuse among Catholic clergy (versus say other faiths), but no one can doubt that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as an institution sought to deny and cover up its crimes.  Denying and covering up your crimes isn't what a moral relativist does.  A moral relativist admits they happened, but denies that they are crimes.  No one is alleging that.