Church should rethink beliefs, says Blair
By Miguel Cullen
17 April 2009

Tony Blair says the Pope stands for some 'fantastic things' but he does not appear to like his 'entrenched' attitudes on other Catholic beliefs (Photo: CNS)

Tony Blair has suggested that the Church should re-think its position on homosexuality, which he believes is out of step with the views of ordinary churchgoers.

In an interview with gay magazine Attitude last week the former Prime Minister lamented the Church's "entrenched" attitude towards homosexuality, saying: "There is a huge generational difference here.

"There's probably that... fear among religious leaders that if you concede ground on [homosexuality], because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end? You'd start having to rethink many, many things.

"Now, my view is that rethinking is good, so let's carry on rethinking."

He said: "Look: there are many good and great things the Catholic Church does and there are many fantastic things that this Pope stands for but I think that what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic church, particularly a well-attended one on any Sunday here, and did a poll of the congregation you would be surprised at how liberal-minded they were."

Asked if this meant that the average Catholic congregation speaks more for the Church than the Pope does, Mr Blair, who was received into the Catholic faith in December 2007, replied: "Well, I'm not going to say that. On many issues, I think the leaders of the Church and the Church will be in complete agreement.

"But I think on some of these issues, if you went and asked the congregation, I think you'd find that their faith is not to be found in those types of entrenched attitudes."

Mr Blair, who now travels the world on behalf of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to promote understanding of the main religions, added: "If you asked [a Catholic] 'what makes you religious?' and 'what does your faith mean to you?' they would immediately go into compassion, solidarity, relieving suffering.

"I would be really surprised if they went to 'actually, it's to do with believing homosexuality is wrong' or 'it's to do with believing this part of the ritual or doctrine should be done in this particular way'."

He said: "When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them - if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you'd have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece."

Archbishop-elect Vincent Nichols of Westminster rejected Tony Blair's suggestions.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Good Friday edition of the Today programme the archbishop-elect said: "Mr Blair is a very fine politician and he has got very well-tuned political senses. But I am afraid the way the Catholic Church thinks is rather different to that and I think I will take my guide from Pope Benedict actually."

Other Catholics reacted with greater hostility to Mr Blair's remarks.

Former Tory Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe said: "There's one thing that no one has been questioning which is that when Blair was received into the Church he had to say that he believed all the Church's teachings to be the truth. Does that mean that he believed that then or that he in fact perjured himself back then? The Catholic Church is not going to change to please Tony Blair. The sooner he realises that, the better.

"I thought that the archbishop-elect's response was the height of all tact. He praised Mr Blair as a politician, which I certainly wouldn't have done."

Tom Utley, a Daily Mail columnist and a Catholic, also reacted to Mr Blair's responses, writing: "How typical of Tony Blair. He's been a Roman Catholic for only 20 minutes, yet he's already lecturing the Pope on how to 'modernise' the founding Church of Christendom, so as to make its doctrines more congenial to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

"I honestly think the poor man has gone mad. He really does seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that he's God.

But leave aside Mr Blair's monstrous impertinence and his flesh-creeping, folksy language. What emerges with ringing clarity from his interview is that he sees the Roman Catholic Church, to which he converted two years ago, in precisely the same way as he saw the Labour party when he joined it.

"He regards it as an institution to be moulded in his own image, to spread the doctrines of Blairism to the four corners of the earth."

Mr Blair's comments also provoked an angry response from some Catholics in America. Carl Olson, from the San Francisco-based Catholic publishing house Ignatius Press, wrote on his blog: "Frankly, I find it insulting and laughable that Blair would talk glibly about the discipline with which you approach your religious faith, especially in the context of [the Pope], whose erudition as a moral theologian makes Blair's musing look like the empty rhetorical rubbish it is."

In 1997 Mr Blair earned a rebuke from Cardinal Basil Hume for receiving the Eucharist as an Anglican when he attended Mass with his wife and children in a north London church. Tony Blair's wife Cherie is a lifelong Catholic who has also courted controversy by openly dissenting from Church teaching on contraception.