THE
P RTAL
November 2016
Page 24
Hillary or Donald?
Geoffrey Kirk spots that Christians – Catholics
even – have been willing collaborators in this
assault on the divine
Soon it
will be all over, and we will know whether Hillary in her businesslike trouser-suits or Donald, with his bar-room bravado has won the day.
name – is [the ideology of] gender.’ The Enlightenment
project, which was always to replace the sovereignty
of God with human autonomy, is moving towards a
final denouement where sex itself becomes an arena of
human choice and ‘freedom’.
The strange thing is that Christians – Catholics
even – have been willing collaborators in this assault
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the campaign on the divine – by embracing, piecemeal, its aims and
was not the revelation about Donald’s habitual advances, until the Scriptures themselves have been
misogyny (it was hardly unexpected!), but the rabid rendered authoritative only when they can be made to
anti-Catholicism of some in the Clinton camp. This was seem in agreement with the ambient culture.
not the protestant bigotry which used to characterise
American politics. It was something new. The email
The American bishops, quite rightly, objected
exchanges revealed an antipathy to Christian values robustly to the recent defamatory emails – but their
which betrays the trend and tenor of modern Western ‘liberal’ attitudes on other matters show them to be
societies in general. Whilst exotic religions and strange colluding with those they criticise.
beliefs (especially Islam) are embraced with inclusive
tolerance, Christianity is considered ‘backward’ and
deplorable.
We should take it as something of a compliment that
Catholicism comes in for the most fervent criticism.
Make no bones about it, we are the most deplorable of
the ‘deplorables’ to whom Hillary referred. The spiteful
emails of the chattering classes should not surprise
us. They are merely the sound of the pigeons of the
Enlightenment coming home to roost.
Whilst exotic religions and strange beliefs
(especially Islam) are embraced with inclusive
tolerance, Christianity is considered ‘backward’
and deplorable
It has been easy for Christians to forget that for the
best part of two hundred and fifty years the intelligentsia
of the West has been the sworn enemy of our religion.
Now the arrogance of the philosophers has become
the currency of the internet, and the liberation agenda
is beginning to enthral us all.
Pope Francis is right: ‘In Europe, America, Latin
America, Africa, and in some countries of Asia, there
are genuine forms of ideological colonisation taking
place. And one of these – I will call it clearly by its