What's good for the world should be good for Tony and Cherie...

... right? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on who you listen to and who you believe. Catholic News Agency reports:

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who converted to the Catholic faith a few years ago, addressed participants at the Rimini Meeting in Italy, saying, “The voice of the Church should be heard” and “it should speak confidently, clearly and openly.”

During his speech the former Prime Minister underscored, “Faith and reason are in alliance, not opposition,” and that therefore “the Church can be the insistent spiritual voice that makes globalization our servant not our master.”

Meanwhile, Blair's wife, Cherie—described by The Telegraph as "devour [sic] Catholic" and by Christian Today as "a staunch Catholic"—is publicly criticizing the Church's stance on contraceptives. The Telegraph reports that she is "suggesting it [the Catholic Church’s position on birth control] could be preventing women from pursuing a successful career." Because, of course, we all know that successful careers are always and everywhere superior to having children. As Chesterton once said, "Ten million young women rose to their feet with the cry, We will not be dictated to: and proceeded to become stenographers." Hurrah!

Anyhow, while Mr. Blair—who earlier this year humbly suggested that the Pope and other religious leaders need to start "rethinking" their attitudes toward homosexuality—was urging the faithful to be faithful (that is, "Do as I say, not as I do!"), Mrs. Blair was modestly suggesting that the faithful should not be faithful (that is, "Do as I do, not as the Church says!"):

“I feel if you look at what progress women have made in the world, one of the reasons is because they have been able to control their fertility,” she said.

“I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and indeed with that (ability) to control I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the things that I’ve been able to do.”

She added, “Personally, I would prefer it if the Catholic Church took a more positive attitude towards contraception because I think there’s a lot of difference between preventing a life coming about and actually extinguishing a life when it has come about.”

You see, if the staunchly, devout Catholic, Mrs. Blair, had not been able to use contraceptives, she would not be able to go around telling people how using contraceptives has freed her to go around telling people how great it is to use contraceptives. And so forth. Mrs Blair, by the way, made her remarks at a book festival while promoting her autobiography, Speaking for Myself (no word if there will be a sequel titled, Speaking for My Church).

And what of the statement: "...because I think there’s a lot of difference between preventing a life coming about and actually extinguishing a life when it has come about"? Well, it's false, as Pope Paul VI explained in a little document called Humanae Vitae:

Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it —in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong. (par. 14; emphasis added)

The problem, I suggest, isn't that the Church hasn't spoken "confidently, clearly and openly"; it is that many Catholics—many of them sincere and some of them influential—aren't listening closely, carefully, and humbly.

• The (Tony) Blair (Gay) Pitch Project (Insight Scoop; April 8, 2009)
• Contraception and Homosexuality: The Sterile Link of Separation | Dr. Raymond Dennehy
• Human Sexuality and the Catholic Church | Donald P. Asci
• The Truth About Conscience | John F. Kippley
• Marriage and the Family in Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae | Rev. Michael Hull, S.T.D.
• Viagra: It's Not Just for Old Guys Anymore | Mary Beth Bonacci
• Practicing Chastity in an Unchaste Age | Bishop Joseph F. Martino

Comments

[Fr. Andrew]

I'm quite disappointed that CL would invite the Blairs to speak. If I'm not mistaken, the Rimini meeting is CL, right? I wonder if Burgwald knows anything about this.

[Rebecca]

Funny how I always feel insulted by the very women who claim to protect me from my fertility and all its ravages. Thanks for attending to these matters for me, though; now I must return to my meaningless, uneventful existence of raising & schooling my 5 children.

[Don]

Cherie Blair is either poorly informed or being intentionally less than truthful. A woman can control her fertility through very effective natural family planning methods, such as the Billings Method or Creighton method, that allow people to stay firmly faithful to Catholic teaching on birth control. There is no need for contraceptives. There is still much work to be done on teaching natural family planning. Even though the Billings Ovulation Method has been around for close to 35 years, most people (including Catholics) are ignorant of it due to poor marriage prep classes and a completely misguided belief that family planning can only be achieved through artificial means. Natural family planning methods are just as effective as the Pill, as even the Chinese government (no supporter of the Faith) was forced to admit.

[Don]

Sorry, in my previous post I used the phrase "control her fertility" when I should have written "understand and control her fertility". Natural family planning is about understanding the natural cycle of fertility, not artificially and forcibly interfering with the natural cycle of one's body.

[Scott123]

What's the deal with Communion & Liberation? If they invited Tony Blair they certainly aren't orthodox in their faith.

[Barrie Singleton]

Now that Mandelson is running Britain and Blair is running the world, can the apocalypse be far behind?

I recommend reading the transcript of Rimini. What emerges is the lifelong struggle in side Tony between the Catholicism of his mother and the hedonism of his hurt child, culminating in the mad assertion that 'faith and reason are one'. What a banana.

[N.W. Clerk]

CL has some serious problems that I believe are European based. For example, one issue of their magazine, Traces, had a fawning article on Obama. When I asked someone in the know why, he said it was because of a cultural difference: In places like Italy and Spain, politicians are often virulently and publicly anti-Christian. That really overt hostility would not play well in the US, so politicians tend to mouth platitudes about faith.

So when Obama writes books and talks about his "faith," Europeans go, "Wow! This is great." They have no clue (and aren't willing to do the work to dig in and look)that it is a front.

I wonder if the same sort of thing might be happening with Blair. You know - "He says good things about the faith!!!"

This is no excuse, of course. I am deeply, deeply saddened by what CL is doing. It is fine to "dialogue" with nonvbelievers like the Blairs - I recently attended a conference where Catholics interacted with atheists - but everyone - the Catholics AND the nonbelievers - admitted up front what was going on.

To pretend that the positions of the Blairs are "Catholic"...well, it's not just their content but the form - the form of contempt for Catholic ecclesiology, et.

Sigh. I have many friends in CL but this is just the tip of the iceberg.