We would not make incorrect and offensive assertions about Islam, so why is it considered acceptable in Liberal Democrat circles to make incorrect and offensive assertions about Roman Catholicism?

“Anyway, don’t mind what the church thinks, it used to think the earth was flat. It’s like, you know, sometimes the Pope says things he doesn’t really mean, you know? We all get things wrong, even the Pope.”

http://www.catholic.com/library/Papal_Infallibility.asp

Actually, no. See:

http://www.catholic.com/library/Papal_Infallibity.asp

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

for corretions of this common misbelief.

“Agreed. Let’s get ourselves into so much debt that we can never conceivably pay it off.”

Some people do just that. They borrow from every conceivable source, make themselves bankrupt, wait two years, then repeat the cycle.

I have come come the conclusion that people who take out personal loans are mad. They think they are getting something for nothing, but in reality they are paying extortionate rates of interest. Gambling is cheaper.

The trouble is that criticising the Pope is always a dicey business. It essentially amounts to telling the Holy Spirit that he/she/it made a bad choice. And the notion that the Pope is chosen of God is of course what justifies the top down authoritarian structure (again illiberal) of the Catholic Church.

Catholicism is in fact what the Pope says it is, and he gets his orders from the big man in the sky. That’s the deal.

The reactionary doctrinal tradition of the Papacy is opposed to liberalism, but that doesn’t mean that the behaviour of ordinary Catholics is.

I regard it as essentially liberal to judge people on their actions and not on their avowed beliefs; even more so, many Catholics don’t even avow orthodox belief.

I think that for many liberal Catholics, their Catholicism is about an ethnic/cultural identity, rather than being a belief system per se. They just ignore the papacy and turn up to church for the smells and bells. I think it’s very comparable to non-believing Jews; they’re ethnically Catholic rather than religiously.

For those of us who have carefully thought through our religious beliefs it’s hard to deal with someone who thinks that religion is so unimportant that they can believe anything for cultural/family/ethnic reasons. It’s like landing on the doorstep to be told “we never vote, they’re all the same”. But there are people like that.

Agreed. Let’s get ourselves into so much debt that we can never conceivably pay it off.

It is not for me to explain so-called liberal Catholics. They should explain themselves, but they never do in terms that are remotely convincing.

As to religion I advise Laurence Boyce to go to Northern Ireland and find out what our colleagues in the Alliance Party (both Catholic and Protestant) went through to uphold liberal values throughout the bombs and the bullets of the 1970s and 1980s. Let him then come back and say that catholicism is incompatible with liberalism.

I think it would be very easy for you to pick any religious group – Christian or other – and because of the aspect of faith often linked to immutable principle, you could deem them illiberal. Most LDs, and the many religious people who think we are the party with the best principles and political ideas, would be absolutely appalled. Many people of faith question aspects of their religion, and jolly good too – let’s be as tolerant of them as they often are of us!

On the other hand . . .

I’m sorry, did you just equate Catholicism with Nazism?

Well, speaking as an unbeliever who faced a similar issue when I married a (C of E) Christian, a long time ago – I would certainly have raised an eyelid!

It wasn’t easy. My wife would have found it very difficult to bring up children without teaching her religion. I would have found it equally difficult to consent to indoctrination.

What we agreed (and I doubt the Catholics would have allowed this) was to take our children to church etc, but also, to make it clear that not everybody believed in it, that I didn’t believe in it, and that they should expect to gradually make up their own minds as they grew up. (We now have two atheist and one Christian grown-up children by the way!)

As far as I’m concerned, Clegg had plenty to clarify, and on the whole, he did well to do so. He said just one thing that struck too fawning a note, about not being “an active believer”. (As if you could somehow be a passive one!)

I would certainly have wanted to speak, as Clegg did, of my respect for Christian culture. Now I dare say a true believer, like James, thinks that being a “cultural Christian”, like Dawkins, is very much second-best. But I don’t think that is a good enough reason to look down on Clegg.

Oh. Yes. There. Is.

maybe or maybe not, but definitely not between democratic liberalism and Catholicism: secular is not atheist.

Sorry Laurence, your word is not gospel.

Anyway, how your kids turn out is more important than how you raise them – look at yourself!

By the way, the reason for the subsequent backtracking is obvious. It was simply an attempt to claw back some of the votes he lost with that simple “no” – such is the state we’re in.

Stephen Tall: Disagree, James. As I recall, the format of the interview was quick-fire Yes/No, with no further explanation possible. What Nick (or his advisers, whichever) did after the show was clarify the answer he’d have given had he been allowed to utter more than one word. Which was fair enough, I reckon.

Why did it need clarifying? “Do you believe in God?” “No.” does not equate to “I am a blood sucking atheist monster who eats babies.” Issuing a “clarification” is to suggest that it does. Would he have felt the need to issue a “clarification” if he had admitted to believing in God (I can imagine it now: I am on the agnostic end of the theistic spectrum and deeply respect the non-beliefs of all people – yeah, right!).

It also needs to be pointed out that he agreed to go on a programme that wanted to ask him a quickfire rounds of questions. If he wasn’t prepared to accept the consequences of that, he should not have gone on.

Iain Coleman: If Nick hadn’t talked about why his kids go to a Catholic school, you can be sure some hack would have come out with “Clegg says he’s an atheist, but look! He sends his kids to a religious school! What a hypocrite!”, no doubt leading to all sorts of unnecessry drama in the media. It was a good idea to get his clarification in first.

Even assuming the media at its most desperate would have considered it newsworthy, it wouldn’t elicit such a response in a million years. Most parents I come across these days understand all too well about the studied hypocrisy of our current schools system. Two of my atheist friends attend their local church every Sunday, alongside their Orthodox Jewish neighbours in order that they can ensure their kids get to attend the school around the corner from them. This is how our current (state funded) system works.

More than that, if the (prompted) answer was “my wife is a Catholic and under the terms of our marriage I agreed to raise my children as Catholic”, no-one (apart from perhaps Nanny Boyce) would have lifted an eyelid.