RESPECT

Apologies faith and respect
March 16, 2000
By MICHAEL COREN, Sun Media

I'll let you in on a secret. The guys at the Sun love it when columnists take a run at one another. I see their point. Swordplay is entertaining and the odd splash of blood on the ground provides for fine sport. Personally, I've always been against that kind of thing. I'd rather take a stab at the culture than lunge at colleagues.

But exceptions have to be made. When a column is written that is particularly problematic I owe it to everyone, including the columnist, to put matters straight. Especially when that column concerns an issue of international importance.

Last weekend John Paul the Great issued an apology for some of the failings of the Roman Catholic Church. It was gracious and, as always with this extraordinary man, genuine.

But the Sun's Marianne Meed Ward felt differently. "I hope the Pope feels better for the apology. It didn't do much for me." Quite.

Some of her errors. First, "Popes are supposed to be infallible."

Yes they are, but only on those few occasions when they officially speak on matters of faith and morals. If you don't understand this, you don't understand the Church.

Second, the Church was guilty of "ignoring Jews during the Holocaust" and, as Ward rather vulgarly put it, did "nothing when your neighbours of a different faith (were) carted off to gas chambers. Well, duh."

In fact, Polish priests were prime victims of Nazi human experiments, Catholics died in the gas chambers in numbers second only to Jews, the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles at the Israeli Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, contains more Catholics than any other faith. Has the ever-so-judgmental Ward not heard of priests being skinned alive by the SS? Has she not heard of entire congregations, including children, being locked into churches and burnt to death for hiding Jews?

Not heard of Jewish people saved from the camps by Catholic neighbours? She should have asked me. I would have introduced her to some of my aged relatives. They're pretty rough around the edges now I'm afraid, their English has never been as good as their Polish and Yiddish, but they could and would still give Ward a good slap for the nonsense she so blithely wrote. Because they were there.

They lived only because of their Catholic friends, who, by the way were not so lucky and did not survive the slaughter. As for the Pope, he was raised in a heavily Jewish town. Which is why he wept when some years ago in a Rome synagogue he read aloud about the terrors committed by the Nazis against his friends.

Then there is just Ward's good old Catholic bashing. Comments such as "How many Popes does it take to change a light bulb?" Pretty sophisticated stuff, that.

I haven't heard such wit since my time in Belfast amongst the Loyalist bullies or at a Glasgow Rangers game before fans went out "Tim knocking," for the uninitiated, waiting in gangs to ambush passing Catholics.

Of course we also have the old regular of female ordination. This time we are told that the Church should actually apologize for "denying women the chance to be priests."

Oh, I see. Then Catholicism could be as vibrant and successful as, say, the Anglican or the United Church! More importantly, the Church is not going to contradict truth, scripture and God-given tradition just because a few people in this soiled age would like it.

You can't always have what you want.

Nobody is demanding you become or remain a Catholic. But if you do, at least respect the claims of the church to which you belong.

Goodness me, I'd still like to be a professional soccer player. Can't be. Others want to be clever and sardonic critics of culture and institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church. Sorry, ain't going to happen.

It's interesting that Ward's column came just days after a hate gang stormed a Catholic church in Montreal and defaced the altar with used sanitary pads and condoms. The outrage received barely any coverage in the media. But then the victims were Catholics, and you can say anything you want about them. Can't you?