It's a Sin!

I see that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and Primate of England and Wales (a term which always, for me at least, conjures up mental images of a monkey in mitre and robes swinging through the trees), has 'reignited the abortion debate', by urging a review of the abortion laws and the current 24 week limit for terminations. Apparently the Cardinal has detected a shift in public opinion in Britain. A shift in the opinion of right wing male-dominated rags like the Daily Mail perhaps. However, thankfully the newspaper which once voted Hitler its 'Man of the Year', is not representative of wider opinion in the UK.

Now, if I was a cynic, I might suspect that the only reason that the Catholic Church might be interested in cutting the number of abortions, would to be ensure a rise in the number of potential kiddie victims for its peadophile priests. I mean, the falling birth rates in industrialised countries like Britain and the consequent reduction in the number of available children must be a real bummer for them. Up and down the country priests are probably suffering severe withdrawal symptoms due to the shortage of choir boys. The beauty of restricting abortion, of course, is that women would be forced to go full-term with unwanted pregnancies and have the babies adopted or, even better, whisked off to one of those catholic orphanages run by crazy nuns who beat their charges on a daily basis! See, it all makes sense! Another bloody catholic conspiracy.

Getting back to the original point - why is this sort of thing considered news? Who cares what some celibate Catholic priest (apparently they don't even masturbate) thinks about any issue relating to sex? The last time I looked, this was a nominally Protestant country - we thankfully severed official ties with the Vatican back in the Sixteenth Century. Perhaps if Catholic priests did wank more to relieve their sexual tensions, they'd bugger fewer little boys in the vestry. Indeed, if they're only going to endorse sexual intercourse within marriage, they really should be encouraging wanking for us hordes of sinful singletons. OK, I know, all that sperm represents potential babies, so whacking off is actually considered a form of abortion - but surely a quick one off the wrist behind the lectern is preferable to giving the choir boys one up the jacksie behind the stalls? It's simply a question of which is the lesser evil.