Scottish Catholic Observer

It’s not been a good time for politicians, as resignations mount, reputations are ruined and careers falter over what the tabloids call ‘sleaze’ but we’d be far better to label as old-fashioned breaking of the Seventh Commandment.

For this is adultery, the flouting of God’s laws on sexual morality and conduct, and, although it would be wrong to say that all politicians are equally guilty, it has to be said that most have done little or nothing to change a culture in which the denigration of others, of both genders, for sexual pleasure, seems to be a given.

But we should not be at all surprised, for it’s our politicians of all parties, almost to a man and woman, who, over the past 50 years or so, have dished up an unrelenting diet of laws not just supporting but actively promoting promiscuity and totally ignoring that all-important Seventh Commandment.

We’ve had the legalisation of homosexual acts, abortion, free contraception to encourage sex outwith the sanctity of marriage, and injections for teenage girls on the assumption that they will be promiscuous and hence vulnerable to sexually-transmitted diseases. We’ve had the redefinition of marriage, and, even the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ as part of same-sex marriage, and now the drive is on to push gender disorientation, especially to vulnerable young people, as far as possible.

Our own Scottish Government is proud of the fact that it will now use our taxes to provide free abortions for women from Northern Ireland and, despite banning smacking and talking of giving every child the best start in life, it clearly views free abortion as the hallmark of the new Scotland it is building. And, yes, it seems that nearly every MSP agrees with that view, too.

The common denominator in this litany of shameful flouting of God’s laws is our politicians. As a class, they have pushed relentlessly the liberal, humanist agenda, in which personal ‘freedom’ is king, in a world without rules.

That’s why we should be not at all surprised that this ruling elite, most of whom are career politicians, lives out its view of life for the rest of us, and gets on, within its own space, with drowning in an orgy of promiscuity.

It’s the very lifestyle that it has legislated for, ever since the late Liberal MP Roy Jenkins famously stood up in the early 1960s and said that he wanted to see the implementation of all that has since come to pass.

Now, it’s clear that some, within the elite, are starting to rebel against this culture of excess, allowing parts of it, here and there to see the light of day. It’s a great pity that much of the present drive to clean out the Westminster and Holyrood stables has come to be seen as a feminist initiative, which concentrates on women within the system as victims and men as predators, whereas, in fact it’s an issue that affects men and women equally.

It’s basic sinfulness and immorality at its very worst, which chips away at the very decency of all people, both within and outwith politics.

Our Church leaders often talk of us living in a post-Christian society and bemoan the collapse of public and private morals. But the fact is that they, and we, have no one but ourselves, as Catholics and as Christians, of all denominations, to blame for this sorry state of affairs, by consistently failing to call our politicians to account.

They’ve all been passing down their own collective and cultural morals and lifestyle to the rest of us, and we’ve been very poor at promoting our counterculture, which preaches chastity outwith marriage, that is marriage as it has always been understood until recently, and fidelity within.

In fact, I can’t recall any Church leaders of any denomination, saying anything about the current, very public admission, that our political systems are collapsing from within, thanks to the personal immorality of so many who ask for the trust of their colleagues and of us, as voters, to run the country.

Yet we need to hear those leaders, now, loud and clear, for it very clear that personal and cultural sexual immorality undermines and destroys society, just as it is now destroying our politicians and political system, at the very time that MPs and MSPs, of all hues, need to pull together to salvage something out of the Brexit wreckage.

If ever we needed proof that the world of promiscuity, so lauded, promoted and legislated for by our political parties and classes for half a century, does not built a happy country, world or culture, we need look no further that our two parliaments.

Now is the time for us to get our Christian message of the true meaning of love, marriage, fidelity and Gospel values over as never before.

We need to point out that a return to traditional, Christian values will bring stability, and build a culture based on trust, honesty and true love for others, rather than the hopelessness of all that politicians have legislated for so eagerly, and the destruction it is currently bringing in its wake to its own authors.