Two stories from the UK

- Remember that traditionalist complementarity of marriage conference recently held at the Vatican? The ex-Cjief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, gave a talk. I'd heard good things about it but when I listened to the video of the talk, I was soon disappointed by all the conservative rhetoric. It wasn't just me ... Andrew Brown has written about the lecture too ... Talking about fish copulation is no way to discuss the family Here's a bit of Brown's article ...

[...] There was a conference in Rome last week on the family, organised by conservative forces in the Vatican, where Southern Baptists, Mormons, and even the former chief rabbi here, Lord Sacks, joined forces to proclaim their devotion to the traditional family, and to the “complementarity” of man and woman. This last is a phrase invented really to make gay marriage seem impossible as well as undesirable. It is by no means the worst of the crimes against biology in conservative rhetoric .....

The family unit, based around a monogamous union, may be almost as wonderful as Sacks claims: “The single most humanising institution in history … the best means we have yet discovered for nurturing future generations and enabling children to grow in a matrix of stability and love. It is where one generation passes on its values to the next, ensuring the continuity of a civilisation.”

But it really isn’t threatened when two women marry each other. It is threatened today by economic pressures, by selfishness and by simple human inadequacy.

Yet religious rhetoric about defending marriage almost always means attacking gay people’s marriages rather than straight people’s divorces, or even their failure to form families at all. The growth of human dignity and flourishing brought about by monogamy is not something Sacks invented. It’s real. But neither is it a finished work ...


- There's talk of the new book by Austen Ivereigh in which he opines that Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor worked behind the scenes to get Francis elected pope .... What is the truth about Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and ‘Team Bergoglio’? As Damian Thompson writes, this has always kind of happened, but apparently it is now frowned upon and Murphy-O’Connor has denied that it occurred. Strange that Austen Ivereigh was the press secretary for liberal Murphy-O'Connor, when he himself is quite conservative ... he's part of Catholic Voices, a traditionalist Catholic PR group that includes the press officer for Opus Dei, Jack Valero. Here are some of Ivereigh's past articles ... In full: Lord Sacks speech that brought Vatican conference to its feet ... How the Holy See was ambushed by a UN kangaroo court ... The Church will have to fight this attempt to redefine marriage ... What connects Cameron to Italian Catholics.