My late father, Paul Johnson, was never afraid to cross swords with the New Atheists, or “Prometheans” as he generously called them – though I don’t think Richard Dawkins was ever titanic enough to accept his challenge to a public debate. What would he have made of the professor’s startling admission in a recent interview that “I call myself a cultural Christian and I think it would be truly dreadful if we substituted any alternative religion”?
I doubt that we can expect an apology from the author of The God Delusion for the vehemence and vulgarity of his anti-Catholic polemics. Thirty years ago, Dawkins wrote: “Paul Johnson believes what he is ordered to believe by this Pole [John Paul II] and he is already committed to reversing his mind when told to do so by the Pole’s successor, no matter who that successor may be. What an ignominious, contemptible, retarded basis for holding the deepest beliefs of one’s life.”
As a red-haired Catholic who grew up in the Potteries, my father had a thick skin and naturally took a charitable view of such personal abuse.
With his keen eye for the foibles of intellectuals, though, he would have noted the evident discomfort of Prof Dawkins when faced with the consequences of his own life’s work, much of which has been devoted to demolishing the moral foundations of what he still calls “a Christian country”. At the age of 83, Dawkins has belatedly noticed that Christianity is “a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I think Islam is not”.
Three centuries ago, another critic of the Church, Edward Gibbon, wrote that, but for Christendom’s victory over the invading Arabs at Poitiers in 732, Islam might well have conquered Europe.
“Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet,” he wrote. Has Dawkins, a lifelong Oxford don, finally realised that not even his beloved university would be immune to Islamist intolerance?
Puncturing the pretensions of Prof Dawkins was not my father’s only encounter with the false notion, common among “cultural Christians” of a certain age, that Catholics are slaves to a misunderstanding of what constitutes papal infallibility. In 1965, when John Freeman, then editor of the New Statesman, was made ambassador to Washington, my father (his deputy) was the obvious successor. As the board deliberated on whether to offer him the editorship, there was one dissenting voice: Leonard Woolf. The veteran publisher of Bloomsbury and widower of Virginia took strong exception to the appointment of a Catholic, arguing that the English-speaking world’s leading socialist organ would thereby become subservient to Rome. So strong was Woolf’s objection that when he was outvoted, he resigned from the board. A bigot, certainly; but an honourable one.
Had the Fabians of the New Statesman (or the science dons of Oxford) been better “cultural Christians”, someone might have reminded them of St John Henry Newman’s celebrated toast in Section 5 of his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Perhaps Catholic Herald readers, being more ecumenical, will let me do so now: “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please – still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”
Obedience to conscience, then, may be sound Catholic doctrine – even on the rare occasions when it conflicts with ecclesiastical authority. Pope Francis will have tested many consciences with his remarks about Ukraine last month: “The strongest one is the one who … has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates.”
Somehow I cannot imagine St John Paul the Great dispensing such advice – especially given that the intended recipient is Volodymyr Zelensky and the foe is Vladimir Putin. “Be not afraid” was the refrain of the “elderly Pole”, as Richard Dawkins dismissively called one of the bravest, holiest and greatest men of the last century.
When popes are not speaking ex cathedra, their statements tend to reflect their experiences of life. Pope Francis, who as Jorge Bergoglio was a Jesuit provincial superior, is an Argentinian used to shepherding his order through the chaos of brutal but short-lived Latin American regimes.
By contrast, the young Karol Wojtyła had endured both Nazi and Communist totalitarian tyrannies. As Pope he survived two assassination attempts. Putin would show no mercy to the white flag. Confronted with such devils, there is only defiance, even at the risk of martyrdom.
<strong><strong>This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click</strong> <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1">h</a></mark><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">ere</mark></a>.</strong>
