Damian Thompson
Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret".
Gay marriage: after today's letter in the Telegraph, the Catholic Church really is at war with the Government
More than a thousand Catholic priests have signed the letter to The Daily Telegraph arguing that the Government's gay marriage plans will "severely restrict the ability of Catholics to teach the truth about marriage in their schools" and rejecting promised safeguards as "meaningless".
I'll be honest: when I read the news story about the letter, I thought: gosh, a thousand conservative/traditionalist priests are standing up to be counted. But that just goes to show the folly of assuming that the Catholic Church is as factional as the Church of England. Because when I worked my way down the names, I kept coming across priests who are poles apart liturgically and even differ in the way they interpret Catholic teaching on homosexuality. The list includes members of the "Magic Circle" of well-connected liberals, Latin Mass traditionalists, moderate conservatives and the leaders of the newly formed Ordinariate. As for the political leanings of the signatories, I can assure you that Labour supporters are well represented. So, too, are celibate gay priests.
All of which brings home the extent to which the "conservative" David Cameron is at war not just with fundamentalists, but also with middle-of-the-road clergy and lay people from Britain's largest and, arguably, best-integrated religious minority. By redefining marriage without even the fig leaf of a manifesto commitment, he has forced Catholics and other Christians who thought of themselves as gay-friendly to take a stance which, in the lexicon of hashtag politics (see my earlier post), renders them homophobic opponents of "equal marriage". They won't quickly forgive him for that.
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