Benedict's message to Scottish bishops skirts too close to politics

IN HIS address to Scotland's Roman Catholic Bishops in Rome yesterday Pope Benedict XVI unwisely strayed into controversial areas of Scottish religious history, ethics, politics and sectarianism.

While it is to be expected that the Pontiff, in announcing that he will visit Scotland later this year, would send a message to this country, the tone and timing of his intervention has struck an unfortunately discordant note.

Pope Benedict's message that Scotland has "suffered the tragedy of division" within the Church, a reference to the Reformation, seemed to be at odds with his claim that progress – through the ecumenical group Action of Churches Together in Scotland – had been made towards "healing the wounds".

However, there are many in the churches that are the product of that Reformation who will baulk at his urging of Catholics to set their sights on the goal of "full, visible unity" and his assertion that "nothing less can respond to the will of Christ".

The recent move by the Pope to provide a structure to allow Anglicans who disagree with the ordination of women priests and bishops to join the Catholic Church, seen as having undermined the Archbishop of Canterbury, will have set alarms bells ringing as to the ultimate aim of the Church of Rome.

But perhaps more contentious than that was the Pope's raising of the issue of sectarianism, which he said had continued to rear its head in Scotland, and his placing of that statement within the context of the division of the churches.

No-one would claim that there are not pockets of sectarianism still within Scotland, that there is still some religious intolerance or that crimes are committed supposedly in the name of religion, but taken across the whole country these incidents are relatively rare.

Scotland has, as the Pope pointed out, separate Catholic education, which goes to great pains to emphasise religious understanding, and is a country where the vast majority of people practise their religion in their own way, free of sectarian tension or conflict.

In making this speech the Pope has also ventured into the area of politics by making clear his opposition to the assisted suicide bill being promoted by MSP Margo MacDonald and his displeasure at areas of laws on equality which have been promoted north and south of the Border.

The combined effect of this address leaves the perception that Scotland is, in the eyes of the leader of the world's Roman Catholics, a place of which he disapproves and where he is setting his Church the goal of changing to his own narrow way of religious thinking.

This attitude will, we fear, make many Scots uneasy, not just those in the churches of the Reformation or those who have no religion at all, but many more liberal Catholics who disapprove of what they see as his hard-line views.

It would have been wiser for the Holy Father to have lauded the many positive aspects of the work his Church does and the contribution Catholics make to our society, rather than to preach ad hominem to Scotland.