act. To some conservatives, such attention to the individual is the first step down the slip- pery slope of moral relativism, and they were shocked to see Benedict take it. Lawler worried about a “deluge of mis - information”. But there is no “confusion” about the Church’s teaching. People know exactly what the Church teaches about birth control; they just disagree with the teaching and, significantly, they do not think their rela- tionship with Christ or their prospects at eternal salvation are threatened by the dis- agreement. In a 2003 poll conducted by The Washington Post, 88 per cent of Catholics said they did not agree with the prohibition against artificial contraception.
religion to ethics. For liberals, this has entailed putting the Church’s social justice at the centre of their faith. For conservatives, that place is reserved for church teachings on sexuality. For both sides, their “expertise” on morality has gained them access to the public forum. But, as Benedict has made clear, the empty tomb is at the centre of Christian thought and both our social justice teachings and our sexual ethics derive from our dogmatic claims. Conservatives may now be complaining that the media culture is obsessed with sex, but they have helped nurse the obsession. Conservative disquiet with the Pope has
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been evident for some time. Less than a year after Benedict’s election, the late Rev. Richard John Neuhaus wrote an article in his journal, First Things, in which he spoke of “a palpable uneasiness” among those who had long admired Cardinal Ratzinger. Neuhaus noted the appointment of then-Archbishop William Levada as cardinal-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Levada, as Archbishop of San Francisco, had famously worked out an agreement with the city on the extension of health-care benefits to same-sex couples that was theologically bullet-proof but denied some conservatives the chance to fight another round in the culture wars. In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict warned about “capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise”, a warning unlikely to come from George Weigel. Benedict took action against conservative darling Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, who had been publicly defended by Weigel, Neuhaus and others. And, during broadcasts of the papal Masses in the United States in 2008 and his more recent trip to the United Kingdom, the commentators on the Eternal Word Television Network spoke disparagingly of “overweening and preening exercise in multi - cultural exhibitionism”, and of “an agenda” behind the presence of female altar servers. Five years ago, when Pope Benedict first stepped on to the loggia of St Peter’s after his election, conservatives cheered and liberals trembled. Not any more.
■Michael Sean Winters writes for The Tablet from Washington DC.
12 | THE TABLET | 11 December 2010
here is one sense in which “confu- sion” among the faithful does exist, but it is a confusion shared by con- servatives and liberals. Both reduce
PETER STANFORD
‘The Big Society is an aspiration that is vague enough as to mean whatever you want it to’
What does the Government mean when it talks about the “Big Society”? I wasn’t clear when David Cameron presented it as his “big idea” during the general election, and I remain puzzled. When you speak to people in the charity sector, they are equally bemused. “If the Big Society is going to mean anything …” they begin their sentences. As confusion edges towards scepticism, Phillip Blond – Anglican theologian, think tanker and David Cameron’s favourite Big Society guru – has been taking to the airwaves to spell out what it means for him: namely, according to his latest interview, community groups taking over the running of such local services as ports and leisure centres. I have never been that keen on swimming after my mother took me to our local pool when I was eight and told me that I didn’t need any lessons, I would naturally float. I didn’t. I sank. And the memory of almost drowning is so strong that I still have to be coaxed to take my own children for a dip at the weekend. The only mercy is that it is over relatively quickly. So why would I – or any other moderately busy member of the community – want to run the local leisure centre? I go there for a brief swim, not a lengthy board meeting (and experience suggests that the more democratic an organisation is, the longer it takes to reach decisions). If the Big Society means all of us doing what is more properly the place of national or local government, as volunteers and therefore at a fraction of the cost, then count me out. Equally, if it is giving a veneer of citizen control to what is in effect a privatisation of state activity – because all that will happen in the swimming-pool scenario is that the board of concerned local swimmers will end up so frustrated about not being able to do their 20 lengths without drowning in bureaucracy that they will hand over day-to-day running to a private company – then, once again, we are being taken for mugs. Yet what makes the Big Society so intriguing (in contrast, for example,
to the last Conservative Prime Minister John Major’s lame “big idea”, the Citizens’ Charter) is that it incorporates into its rhetoric ideas that have deep roots, especially among believers. There is, for example, an argument which says that what we have all for decades been calling Catholic Social Teaching is actually Big Society par excellence – that is, the notion that, in every community, all have a moral obligation to pool some of their time and skills so that the weak and marginalised are not trampled. Is the appeal of the well-meaning Phillip Blond to the Government, I can’t help wondering, that as an Anglican theologian he brings a non-specific but attractive, time-honoured ethical underpinning to its policies? That lack of precision may be frustrating for the Third Sector, but is useful to our politicians. The Big Society remains an aspiration that is attractive but vague enough as to mean whatever you want it to. Time will tell if I am being too
cynical. In the meantime, may I suggest a role model for the Big Society? Dominique de Borchgrave was not a natural prison reformer. She came from an aristocratic and instinctively conservative background and therefore took some convincing to espouse the cause. When she did, it was out of love for her late partner, the barrister Paddy Pakenham, son of Lord Longford. In 2005, as part of the trust set up in memory of Longford, she established and tirelessly raised funds for a scholarship scheme named after Paddy for young ex-offenders who wanted to study law. What was truly extraordinary, I
reflected during Dominique’s memorial service at the Brompton Oratory, after her recent and very sudden death had robbed many of a beloved friend, was the extent to which her negative view of prisoners (shared, I fear, with the majority of the population) was changed by meeting them, and their families, both in jail and in her own home. She put aside the protection that we all accumulate over a lifetime and listened to people talking frankly about the circumstances and wrong turns in their life. It forced her to confront her own prejudices. Those meetings gave her, she said, a whole new perspective, and one which was to connect her via the fund with individuals who would otherwise never have crossed her path. The resulting benefits were felt by both parties. That, surely, is the essence of the Big Society.
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