Catholic Cardinal brings Lambeth Conference into disrepute

Second Editorial by Terry Sanderson

A high profile Vatican official, Cardinal Ivan Dias, who revels in the title “prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples” told the Lambeth Conference that the Anglican Communion is suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s”.

Speaking to the 650 Anglican bishops gathered for the ten-yearly gay-bashing jamboree, the Cardinal said: “The spiritual combat, described in the Books of Genesis and Revelation, has continued unabated all down the ages... This combat rages fiercely even today, aided and abetted by well-known secret sects, Satanic groups and New Age movements, to mention but a few, and reveals many ugly heads of the hideous anti-God monster: among them are notoriously secularism, which seeks to build a Godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the Gospel. All of these seek to efface any reference to God or to things supernatural, and to supplant it with mundane values and behaviour patterns which purposely ignore the transcendental and the divine.”

Newspaper “religious affairs correspondents” reported these crackpot words with all the reverence we have come to expect of these self-important nincompoops. Why do they give so much space to patent rubbish of this kind? It’s as though they want to assist the Vatican in its never-ending efforts to drag us back into the Middle Ages.

Let’s get this straight: Cardinal Dias is primitive, wilfully ignorant (secularism is not about suppressing religion) and, if he really believes what he says, seriously in need of treatment.

25 July 2008