Catholicism

Mr Theodore McCarrick will spend his last days within the limestone walls of St Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kansas. He’ll be able to see the stunning St Fidelis Church, ‘the Basilica of the Plains’, from his window. His quarters in the monastery will be simple, clean, and pleasant. He’ll have all the time in the world to pray, read, write, think, or just putter, as old men like to do. His meals, laundry, heating, and other necessities will be taken care of for him. There will always be a tender Franciscan nearby if he needs to talk, or cry, or play checkers. He’ll die surrounded by holy men praying for the repose of his soul.

What connects the Ralph Northam story, the Covington story, and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation story? Is it the dark side of social media? The perils of high-school? Catholicism in America today? It is all that. More than anything, however, it is abortion. Abortion is and arguably always has been the nuclear core of the culture war, yet these days it hides itself. The pitched media scraps between progressives and conservatives are often still about Roe v. Wade, we just pretend that they are not. We act as if the Ralph Northam story is about racism. It isn’t. It’s about what he said about fetuses, and the tasteless whooping for late-term abortions.

Conservative American Catholics – especially those working in the media – are gulping nervously every time they check Twitter. The reason? A diminutive prayerful lady with a rosary in her handbag. She’s called Dawn Eden Goldstein, and she’s a Catholic convert who writes about ‘healing painful memories’ – but seems more interested in creating them on Twitter. Dawn’s particular bête noire is the Catholic Herald magazine, which made the mistake of inviting her to a lunch at the Metropolitan Club to celebrate the launch of its US edition. Here she picked up the information that a couple of the magazine’s directors had been invited to breakfast with Steve Bannon.

A couple of years ago, in high summer, my wife and I attended Mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral, as we do every time we visit New York. It is, in general, a bracing experience for Catholics who have been paddling in the tepid pools of Irish Catholicism. The celebrant, a middle-aged man with the physique and personality of a matinee idol, gave a startling sermon about the gospel of the day, Matthew 10:34, in which Jesus declares, ‘I have come to bring not peace but a sword.’ In his homily, the priest tore into sentimental notions of Christianity and the corruptions of concepts such as compassion and mercy.

By now, it’s clear to most American Catholics that our Holy Father just doesn’t like us. While most laypeople assumed his ‘rigidity’ slur was aimed at the legions of young people who are returning to the Latin Mass. Nope: most bishops know he’s talking about the Yanks. He calls the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’s conservative majority, like the saintly and learned Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, right-wing ideologues. His senior advisers accuse Catholic conservatives of engaging in an ‘ecumenism of hate’ with Evangelical Protestants. Sure: Pope Francis cottoned to a few bishops.

It will come as no surprise that something in the news has Piers Morgan deeply troubled. For the past two days, Morgan has been incandescent over the Met Gala and its dress code. In a column for MailOnline he claims that, as a Catholic, he has become a victim of cultural appropriation due to fancy dress outfits worn to a party by celebrities.The Gala, a fixture of the New York social season at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is well known for the theme it sets, and this year it was ‘Heavenly Bodies’ - inspired by the Roman Catholic Church. The Gala was held to launch an exhibition of the same name. Dozens of items of religious clothing have been allowed out of the Vatican Archives to be seen by the public for the first time.Guests at the party took the dress code to heart.