Scottish Cardinal uses the F word.

he said it! Cardinal Keith O’Brien haswill* fallen into the cliche-trap when he said a government bill allowing research using hybrid embryos would cause experiments of ‘Frankenstein proportion’.

BBC report here
Telegraph’s Holy Smoke says the Prime Minister is anti-catholic, citing embryos for the prosecution and persecution.
Arbichop Cranmer gives a lengthy and considered response.

(This post gets sweary as my ire increases.)

Now here’s the problem:
• Scientists (who know best) say they need to shove somatic human DNA into a cow cell membrane for the purposes of researching diseases.
• The government (of whom I am no friend) put said provisions in a bill and for that I say well done.
• Catholics are sorely dischuffed. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a few as cabinet ministers and the government relies on Scottish Catholics as a block vote for a brave few of its Scottish MPs.
• And, lo, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has written to Gordon Brown saying Labour Party members of parliament should have a free vote on the issue, minister should resign, the research in ‘monstrous’ etc etc yuck yuck blah blah.

The Cardinal made himself look a bit of a burk, out of his own mouth (read this extended extract from his sermon, if you like):

“What I am speaking of is the process whereby scientists create an embryo containing a mixture of animal and human genetic material.”

Except they aren’t.

“This bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.

Only if you think a 14 day old ball of cells with cow membranes is a human being. Most right thinking people don’t. And the Catholic church didn’t for a long time. The doctrine of blastocyst as human is as recent as it is baseless.

“In some European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.

A lot of Catholic priests should have been jailed for raping minors, rather than being moved to new parishes with slapped wrists. They kill bulls for fun in Spain and that is legal. Hanging a Catholic priest was legal in the Isle of Man until 1992. Parliament will deliberate on embryo research, and if passed it becomes legal. What’s your point?

“I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto,

Nor is a lot of stuff governments do, on the principle shit happens. You can also say the moon is made of green cheese, but that doesn’t make it true. Move along, nothing to see here.

nor do they enjoy widespread public support.”

Have you done the polling Cardinal? Do show your results and methodology. Or are you just making shit up.  Surely not, for that would be a lie. ‘100% of elderly catholics asked in the confessional agreed under pain of excommunication that…’

Depends how you ask the question, too Cardinal. Let’s put it this way: your husband/wife/child/mother/best friend is incapacitated by a disease, the cure for which has come about as a result of Frankensteinian research on these hybrids. Do you, in retrospect, support the research which led to this drug and wish the bag of same to be hung and be plugged into loved one’s arm? Do you, in other words accord privileges of survival to a ball of unviable cells which you deny to a sentient suffering human being.

If Roman Catholic (government) ministers wish to defy the government, fine. But they should resign and do so from the back benches, where their pay would be halved. God or mammon. The crucifix or the greasy pole. I bet they’ll find a way to have all four: threaten Gordon Brown (who’s trailing badly in the polls and is in a weak position) with a damaging handful of resignations. He will dither for a while, roll and show belly and let them away with not supporting a big government bill.

News update, here we fucking go: Labour MPs may rebel over embryos. I wonder how many of them voted for going into Iraq. I may have to compile a twatalog after the vote.

Hopefully enough MPs will be clear-eyed enough to recognize that scientists don’t do this shit for fun. They don’t just suddenly look up from a fifth pint and say, ‘I know, we’ll put human DNA in a cow’s egg just for a giggle! I love you. You’re my best mate!’

The Cardinal can address these concerns to his flock.  He can insist that Catholic scientists and medics have nothing to do with this research, which is aimed at curing some pretty shitty human diseases for which prayer and saintly intercession is and been proved to be fuck all use.

But no, he does not end there. He also wants a permanent commission in bioethics. In other words a talking shop which can be spiked with Christians who will try and talk any further embryo research or human genome manipulation into the long grass. Voted on by the House of Lords and given the finger, Cardinal. Face it, the arguments and the science aren’t going the Catholic Church’s way.

Tonight (I know, I sat through a few easters) Jesus is in his tomb with hurty hands (except of course Easter wanders around over a lunar month, so it didn’t really happen today, so what the fuck was it all about, the 3 pm mopefest?) and the tabernacles are open because the Holy Eucharist has been removed: God is not in his Nietzche, he’s dead. So on Sunday the Cardinal, having had his headlines will mouth his nonsense along with the nonsense about the resurrection and the light of Christ to his aging, shrinking congregation. Good people many of them, I am sure. But deluded.

*Haswill is a new word: to get publicity he has announced that he will use his easter Sunday sermon to talk yards of shit about embryo research.