RICHARD CO C KETT

A Catholic condottiere leads back to the bunker
IN LAST WEEK'S Spectator Paul Johnson issued a call to arms for Catholics to resist the rising tides of secularism in modem society, to storm the redoubts of Christianity which have apparently been deserted by a spineless and defeatist Anglican Church.
Johnson has recently been identified as one of the more excitable condottieri of the Catholic "mafia", a favourite secular media invention purporting to embellish all the current crop of articles about the "Catholic revival".
His Spectator article has already spawned what is likely to be only one of several ripostes in the broadsheets.
Like his fellow Catholic columnist Auberon Waugh, it is difficult to know whether to take them seriously; his stock-in-trade is the hyperbole and mischievousness of the professional "man of letters".
Leaving aside his general rant against all those who would deny the Catholic community their rightful place in the sun (Anglicans, secularists, congregationalists, Cardinal Hume... add more as required), his article also serves as a timely reminder of their own goals that can easily be scored in these days of what some might call Catholic triumphalism.
It is Johnson's opening bait that illustrates the problem: "This week I had intended to write about the male homosexual lobby and its plans to alter the law so that its more promiscuous members can get their hands on our children and grandchildren. But the buggers will have to wait."
Many of the more articulate spokespersons for the Catholic community (including the editor of the Catholic Herald) have, in recent week's been offering the public excellent reasons why many Anglicans are turning to Catholicism, to provide a coherent and comprehensive framework of being in this otherwise disturbingly fragmented, rootless and transient post-modern world.
With the collapse of the other great meta-theories of modernism, notably Freudianism and Marxism, Catholicism does indeed seem to offer hope for a spiritual anchor amidst the high seas of our present discontents.
But what Johnson's shameless homophobia reminds us of is the reason why Catholicism became very much a minority religion in the first place; because it was perceived as institutional intolerance and obscurantism.
That is what the Reformation was all about. It is one thing to disapprove of homosexuality, quite another to gratuitously slander homosexuals in such a contemptuous and ridiculous fashion.
Perhaps we should just ignore such comments the ramblings of an "outspoken" journalist but to many non-Catholics Johnson's style as much as the substance of his remarks will come as a reminder of the very reasons why Catholicism was eclipsed as the national religion.
Johnson seems all too keen to retreat to the bunker of bigotry, from which we all hoped Catholicism had safely emerged some time ago. In doing so he has only done his religion a disservice.