What Must The Catholic Church Do To Finally Concede The Moral High Ground?

Whist morality is an innate human quality with evolutionary advantages, it was nonetheless well shepherded in early cultural development by religion. Although we now have a better understanding of the natural origins of morality and are more than capable of being good without god, tradition and culture still maintain the now defunct association between religion and morality. So much so that as soon as we suspect a moral decline the first port of call for the press and media is always a priest or bishop to point us in the right moral direction. We install Bishops in the House of Lords to ensure a moral health-check on new legislation and we religiously broadcast platitudes on the Radio 4's Today programme just to keep our moral compasses in check. Tradition, culture and public opinion will simply not accept the uncoupled status of religion and morality.

To their credit though, the Catholic Church have been working very hard to clearly demonstrate this misconnect. We are familiar with the church's institutionalised child abuse and habitual cover ups, we’re familiar with the frequent homophobia, the antiquated suppression of women and the unforgivable deadly sexual health misinformation. But the vast majority of us still refuse to let the church step down from the moral high ground.

Today sees a new low in Catholic immorality as the secret of Spain’s stolen babies is finally revealed. Parents considered “undesirable” or morally or economically deficient by priests, nuns and doctors were told their babies had died so that they could be placed with “approved” families.

Despite the revelation of this latest scandal (which the Catholic Church is of course at the heart of), I have no doubts that we will still be encouraged to look up to these child traffickers for our moral guidance.

I’ll wager that even if the Vatican installed gas chambers and ovens in St Peter’s Basilica and invaded Poland, we would still be wheeling in a priest to give us a good talking to on our depraved morality.