Ruth Kelly, Myth-Breaker
- GEORGE WEIGEL
Late last year, when Italian philosopher and cabinet minister Rocco Buttiglione was denied the post of European Minister of Justice because his convictions on sexual ethics and marriage were unacceptable to a gaggle of libertine Euro-parliamentarians, there was a certain plausibility to the whole exercise.
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Ruth
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What
is at least from the point of view of secularists, leftists, and the establishment
European media. Buttiglione, after all, was a minister in a center-right Italian
government; Buttiglione is a devout, intellectually astute Catholic whose thinking
is shaped by natural law reasoning and Catholic moral theology; and its an article
of faith in the left-leaning worlds of European secularism (which include most
of the mainstream Euro-media) that Catholic + conservative = in vitro fascist.
Why, then, has Britains Ruth Kelly been getting the Buttiglione Treatment
in recent weeks?
Who, you ask, is Ruth Kelly? Let me introduce you.
Born in Northern Ireland in 1968, Ruth Kelly is a graduate of Oxford and
the London School of Economics, where she earned a masters degree in the dismal
science. After working as an economics correspondent for the (very left-oriented)
Guardian, and later at the Bank of England, Kelly was elected to Parliament
at age 29 in 1997 as a Labor Party candidate. Having held a series of sub-cabinet
posts, Ruth Kelly was appointed to the cabinet last month by Prime Minister Tony
Blair as Education Secretary. (At which point, observers remembered that Britains
first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was another Oxford graduate whod
begun her ministerial career in the department 36-year-old Ruth Kelly now headed.)
Then came the Buttiglione Treatment.
The fact that Ruth Kelly
doesnt conform to certain feminist conventions shes a Catholic, a daily
communicant, married once, the mother of four small children, and vigorously pro-life
evidently didnt agree with one fellow-MP (another woman, no less), who
labeled Kelly that cow. Kellys previous decisions to decline the Health and
Overseas Development cabinet portfolios because those jobs would have entangled
her with contraception and abortion didnt sit well with the keepers of the feminist
flame, either.
The British science establishment quickly went into its
default mode in such matters: the Galileo case was back! A senior geneticist,
Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge, told newspapers that it was very worrying that someone
with Kellys religious convictions might, in overseeing government funding of
scientific research, impede embryo-destructive stem-cell research, thus producing
a schizophrenic and confused situation like that in the United States. (By
which adjectives, Dr. Lovell-Badge apparently evidently means a situation in which
the law requires that scientific experimentation take place within boundaries
that protect innocent human life.) The Times of London summed up this change
in the Ruth Kelly indictment by writing that some MPs [Members of Parliament]
fear her religion may cloud her judgment.
Cloud was the give-away,
of course. In an objective news story, that sentence would have concluded, ...inform
her judgment. But in the intellectually insular world of European secularism
which has many parallels on this side of the Atlantic religious
faith in general and Catholicism in particular are, by definition, obscurantist
and irrational. How could Catholic moral theology inform anyones judgment?
Catholicism, according to the settled mythology of the Euro-secularist Left, clouds
judgment. Or distorts judgment. Or replaces judgment with robotic obedience.
Inflamed by The Da Vinci Code, British conspiracy theorists are
in a lather because Ruth Kelly has participated in activities organized by Opus
Dei. What really earned Ruth Kelly the Buttiglione Treatment, though, is the fact
that shes a myth-breaker: day by day, her public life refutes the canard that
serious public Catholicism in the 21st century means incipient fascism. For who
could plausibly accuse this bright and accomplished trade union member of being
gasp! one of those dreaded conservatives? Conservatives and former
Guardian writers dont get elected Labor MP for Bolton West.
Ruth Kelly isnt just a sign of contradiction for Britains secular Left, though.
What will accommodationist Catholic legislators in America Nancy Pelosi
and Barbara Mikulski, for example make of a popular, competent, liberal,
Oxford-certified Catholic woman and politician whos convinced that Humanae
Vitae and Evangelium Vitae got it right?
This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.
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Acknowledgement
George Weigel. "Ruth Kelly, Myth-Breaker." The Catholic Difference (January 12, 2005).
Reprinted with permission of George Weigel.
George Weigel's column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3123.
The Author
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He is author of The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times; Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II; Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Catholic Church; Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II; Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches; Evangelical Catholicism; The End and the Beginning: John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy; God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church; Letters to a Young Catholic: The Art of Mentoring; The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church; and The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored.
