Scottish Catholic Observer

By Kevin McKenna

THERE are several myths that, from time to time, manifest themselves in Scottish public life and you can easily construct your top three. My favourites are: the police are always honest and transparent in their dealings with the public; benefit fraud is a burden on the public purse and, my all-time number one: the Catholic block vote.

The Scottish media, ever alert to the opportunity of engendering some heat and drama to Scottish politics, will randomly assert that Labour or the SNP must be mindful of ‘the Catholic vote’ as if we annually nominate some delegate to turn up at a party conference, shake his head stubbornly and hold up a big card with a picture of the Pope or Jimmy Johnstone and a big red ‘NO’ in a sans serif face.

And so when Bishop Philip Tartaglia turned up at Bute House the other week to partake of tea and confectionery with the First Minister, it was reminiscent of those times in the 1970s when a truculent trade union leader turned up at No 10 to tell Harold Wilson that it was 20 per cent or we’re all out.

My lord bishop had hinted darkly to Alex Salmond that if his government didn’t turn back from the road to perdition—same-sex ‘marriage’ and no Irish rebel songs, in case you didn’t know—then he might live to reap a bitter harvest when the time comes to vote in the independence referendum.

I do hope that Bishop Tartaglia has not really been cheaply bought off by the stated promise of a right to free speech being included in any anti-sectarian legislation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we were already guaranteed this by the Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps I’ve missed something, and not for the first time.

Certainly, the Catholic hierarchy have a good case in opposing same-sex ‘marriage’ and not simply from a theological position. There is simply no clamour in the country for this, most of us having accepted that the human rights of our gay brothers and sisters in matters of co-habitation have rightly been protected in the civil partnerships legislation. The fact that only a few hundred gay couples have taken advantage of the rights granted to them in civil partnerships has escaped Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP’s Health Minister who is driving this piece of doctrinaire flim-flam through Holyrood.

Nevertheless the Church must proceed with great care when voicing its opposition to same-sex ‘marriage.’ Certainly, the hierarchy is on firm ground when stating simply that re-writing the meaning of what Christians understand by the word marriage risks demeaning a Sacrament that is at the core of our identity.

Yet I am filled with unease when any church, and not least my own, attempts to lay down the law to the secular state. There are good reasons why church and state must remain separate and not just because the prospect of wee zealots running amok burning humanists and condoms and singing Faith of our Fathers doesn’t bear thinking about.

The SNP have taken care to ensure no priest or minister will ever fall foul of the new legislation if they continue to refuse same-sex weddings to occur in their churches. The Catholic Church has a responsibility to proclaim the truth of the Gospel with authority and with compassion. If the secular state simply will not have it while protecting the Church’s right to preach then we risk unwelcome scrutiny of other privileges we hold dear.

Our Catholic schools are vital to the continued health and wellbeing of the Church, yet we have no divine right to them. In a country where the majority profess no religion it is a mark of Scotland’s enlightenment and sense of justice that the state’s exchequer continues to ensure that Catholic schools continue to thrive.

The Church has a significant role to play in the spiritual, political and cultural life of Scotland and this government is eager that it does. But we must be more artful and not a little Machiavellian when the time comes to deploy all our aces.

— Kevin McKenna is former deputy editor of the Herald and former executive editor of the Daily Mail in Scotland. He is currently a columnist for the Guardian