The BBC’s "Thought for the Day" programme represents one of the very few broadcasting pulpits the liberal establishment allows and preserves. With the pressure of secularism intensifying, its position becomes more singular and distinctive. It welcomes a diverse range of contributors from every faith imaginable - apart from, it seems, the Catholic faith.
The Catholic Emancipation act of 1829 began the process of allowing Catholics back into the society which they arguably created with the conversion of Kent in 597, but from which they were ejected by state repression when the Tudors created their own state religion. Discrimination against Catholics is now largely a thing of the past, but “Thought for the Day” seems oddly to remain an exception.
It is true that the Pope has appeared on the program, though it must be noted that his most recent appearance was not thanks to the programme’s regular editorial team, but because he was invited on by the “guest editor” that day, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University.
As regards other Catholics who have been allowed on, there are just a small handful of exceptions: Tim Stanley has slipped through the net perhaps on account of his attractive whimsical wit and the elegance of his humour and lightness of touch; and Tina Beattie, having strong feminist credentials and seldom sounding like a Catholic, has also made it through. But very few others have appeared.
The reason for this may be that the Catholic Church and faith is perceived as one of the greatest threats to the secularisation of our society. Catholicism calls the inclusive bluff, exposing it as hollow and self-contradictory at the centre. This is not welcome.
Why is Catholicism alone a threat? It is because there is no coherent political philosophy on the right, and among the religious alternatives Islam is playing possum; and anyway, the left has adopted it as its favourite totemic victim. If it were ever to be asked how the movement “Gays for Gaza” might fare, all would be lost. So the BBC ensures that never happens.
But Catholicism is dangerous to them, and they know it.
This became clearest when the BBC confronted both the Protestant Tim Farron and the Catholic Jacob Rees-Mogg over their views on same-sex “marriage”.
The BBC has become one of the leading propagandists for LGBTQ+ issues and takes no prisoners when Christians declare their preference for heterosexual marriage. Within the organisation the percentage of LGBTQ+ staff does more than mirror the population in general: it is six times higher. (A freedom of information request sent in by the Christian Institute reveals that 11.5 per cent of BBC bosses and 10.6 per cent of staff are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual, whereas the Office for National Statistics most recently recorded the gay percentage as about 1.7 per cent of the population.)
In an interview on BBC "Question Time", for example, Tim Farron, as a leader of the Liberal Democrats, was asked whether or not gay sex was a sin. He had the utmost difficulty not walking into the trap of self-inflicted public social excommunication as he tried to articulate the traditional Christian ethical view on the practice of one’s sexuality. Despite all kinds of verbal qualifications, he failed.
But whereas he and other Protestants constantly found themselves in trouble and vilified for their hate crime and homophobia, Jacob Rees-Mogg, much to the frustration of his interviewers, took a very different approach.
When asked what his views on homosexuality were, he smiled demurely and explained that the views he took were not personally chosen as his own, but simply those laid down by the Catholic Church, where the place of sex between consenting adults was understood to take place within marriage, with the purpose not primarily of recreation (as the secularists believed), but of procreation.
“If you find that problematic,” he gently murmured, “please take it up with the Pope, not with me”.
With one swift stroke this produced a check-mate with the interviewer who was seeking to establish that Christians are guilty of hate crimes against liberal-minded people in general, and gay people in particular.
This “don’t blame me blame the Church” approach has had two effects. It makes Catholics harder to ambush, but it also reinforces the view that Catholicism plays hard ball in the wars over sexual ethics.
Liberals find the hot button issues, like contraception, abortion, gay marriage and feminism, totally non-negotiable, and when challenged, collapse into an almost incoherent rage, which erupts not in dialogue or debate but only in vituperative cries of “fascist”.
The recent rather extraordinary crisis that threatens to derail the whole UK economy has erupted over the US National Security Agency taking an interest in the British state oppression of peaceable protestors who offer quiet discreet prayers within “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Who are these protestors that are presenting the UK government with the choice of allowing equality for all before the law or facing economic free-fall? They are Catholics, in this case Livia Tossica-Bolt and Isabel Vaughan-Spruce.
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"Thought for the Day" has an editorial policy of presenting spiritual and theological truisms that are applicable to its audience. Inevitably that requires a commitment to a universalistic world view and a relativistic scale of ethical priorities. This would largely preclude clergy who are under a duty of obedience to teach Catholic Truth which reflects the mind of the Church.
Those highly particular values and absolute ethics are an anathema to the BBC. And since all contributors have to present their script for editorial vetting, faithful Catholic clergy would never get their scripts past the first paragraph before the BBC censor red-penned the extended thought.
Where a secularised, relativistic lay Catholic feminist can be found and relied on to reflect the dilute universalism and relativism of the Corporation, occasional space can be made for them.
In effect the Test laws are back. Catholics once again are excluded for refusing to bow down before the dynastic authorities. Not the crown this time, but the BBC.
