Cardinal will lay some smack down

In an outspoken message lamenting a decline in the role of the family, Cardinal O’Brien will claim: "There are moral approaches to the ordering of civil society that have been proved to lead to the common good, irrespective of the religious beliefs or traditions of the societies in which they apply.

"The clearest proof of this is that, throughout history, certain fundamental civil arrangements have been shared across many societies, faiths and traditions. Among them are respect and protection for marriage, the family and human life itself."

But in lamenting the current approach to law-making, and in an attack on MSPs, the Cardinal is set to add: "We are now faced with legislators intent on enacting unjust and immoral laws which do not stem from any natural or rational basis. It is all too easy to think of laws and proposed laws of our own Scottish Parliament on marriage, the family and the adoption of children which come into this depressing category."

The Cardinal’s comments are the latest in a series of attacks on society’s values. In March this year, O’Brien said society had "lost sight of the sacred nature of human life". In his Easter Sunday Homily, given at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, he called for the promotion of "pro-life issues" and called a parliamentary report on embryo research a "development which would lead to even more destruction of human life".

He also called on Scotland’s Roman Catholics to boycott the National Lottery after £3.3m of Lotto cash was handed to Brook Advisory Centres and the FPA – formerly the Family Planning Association.

From last week, our Cardinal at our "national" Red Mass:

As if anticipating a bitter political fight, the cardinal urged the packed cathedral not to let the country degenerate as did the vineyard inhabited by unruly tenants in one of Jesus’ parables from Matthew 21, the day’s Gospel reading.
    "We tend to blame each other," Cardinal McCarrick said. "The level of our discourse can sometimes become shrill and caustic and uneven. What happens in the vineyard can happen to us in our public life.
    "We must be careful we do not bring damage to the vineyard and harm to the vine growers."
    Rather, his listeners might try harder "to bring the wine of sweetness and the wine of strength to ourselves and to all our people," the cardinal said.
    They must try to "dialogue more gently, more positively; more careful to set the conversation within a forum of mutual respect," he said, "by being willing to listen for the good points that are usually present in every reasonable discourse."
    Cardinal McCarrick then referred to an exhortation by Paul in Phillippians 4 to think only noble thoughts.
    America, he said, would be much improved "if our discourse could mirror that of the apostle and help change this vineyard of ours."
    He did not, however, ruminate on the fate of the vineyard workers who, according to Matthew, were severely punished when they failed to obey the vineyard owner, traditionally understood in the parable as God.

Now, now Julia…