Catholics ââ?¬Ë?are bigot victimsââ?¬â?¢

[ian1964 10,419]

THE Hugh Dallas email storm has exposed "deep and vicious" religious bigotry in Scotland, a top Catholic claimed last night.

 

Peter Kearney warned the controversy over a sick internet jibe at the Pope was the "tip of the iceberg" - and insisted our country was still tainted by widespread sectarianism.

 

SFA referees' chief Dallas quit in the wake of the web message scandal - after the Catholic press chief had publicly called for his head.

 

But in a shock outburst last night Mr Kearney, 47, widened his attack, saying: "Tasteless emails appear to be simply the tip of a disturbing iceberg of anti-Catholicism in Scottish society.

 

"They illuminate the reality of a layer of deep, wide and vicious anti-Catholic hostility in our country."

 

We told last Thursday how Mr Kearney - spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland - wrote to Hampden top brass to vent his frustration over the SFA probe into the email row.

 

And he called for Dallas to be sacked if he was found guilty of sending a message, below right - supposedly from an SFA address - which mocked the Pope and the church's child abuse scandal. Dallas resigned within 24 hours.

 

Now, Mr Kearney has accused Scotland of failing to deal with bigotry going back hundreds of years.

 

He said: "Catholics in Scotland have drawn a line in the sand. The bigotry, bile, sectarian undercurrents and innuendos must end.

 

"Such hateful attitudes have had their day, they poison the well of community life. They must be excised once and for all.

 

"Scotland has a disturbing track record in this field. Reaction to my letter has proved beyond doubt that Scotland has become completely inured to the corrosive effects of religious bigotry."

 

But Mr Kearney said today's Catholics were no longer willing to put up with discrimination.

 

He added: "I detect a new resolve. Our grandparents and even our parents suffered intolerance and persecution. We will not tolerate it. We will not laugh it off or see the funny side - because there is no funny side.

 

"Beneath the surface of the nasty emails and the intemperate asides of public figures there are others whose malignancy is altogether more pernicious."

 

He claimed failure to tackle sectarianism has even resulted in "thugs" launching physical attacks on priests in West Lothian, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire.

 

Mr Kearney also knocked a famous Holyrood slogan, by saying Catholics now refer to Scotland as 'The best SMALL-MINDED country in the world'.

 

Last night a Scottish Government spokesman said: "Sectarianism is an anachronism from our past and should never be accepted, excused or tolerated. The Scottish Government supports a range of initiatives to tackle sectarianism through education and other approaches.

 

"There is, for example, the Show Bigotry the Red Card initiative tackling sectarianism among football supporters, and Nil by Mouth has been working to tackle sectarianism in the workplace."

 

Meanwhile Celtic fans took a swipe at Dallas during Saturday's 2-2 draw with Inverness Caley Thistle - by humming the theme to the 1980's US TV soap of the same name. Supporters in the controversial 'Green Brigade' also chanted "f*** the SFA."

 

 

Read more: http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/3250228/Hugh-Dallas-storm-shows-deep-religious-bigotry-in-Scotland-a-top-Catholic-claims.html#ixzz16f0a5F2G

[calscot 0]

If sending a joke satirising real topical events is bigotry then it figures that all comedy satire must essentially be a crime.

 

And if making a joke is that bad, surely an institution covering up child abuse must be akin to running a paedophile ring?

 

Perhaps we should just get serious and ban all jokes as well as declaring the catholic church illegal and putting all clergy on the sexual offenders register.

 

It's weird how the real offenders are acting like the victims.

[Gazza_8 233]

THE Hugh Dallas email storm has exposed "deep and vicious" religious bigotry in Scotland, a top Catholic claimed last night.

 

What the feck is a 'top Catholic'?

 

Someone who goes to chapel every Sunday?

 

Someone who is intelligent?

 

Someone who sticks up for the Catholic religion?

 

What a load of shite! Please stop with your constant whinging. Please!

[Super_Ally 0]

Sorry bmck, but religion just isn't that important in modern society and the catholic church should just wind their neck in. It isn't important enough for people to try and do them down. It's tiresome and the press should stop giving them a platform to moan like buggery.

[bmck 117]

Sorry bmck, but religion just isn't that important in modern society and the catholic church should just wind their neck in. It isn't important enough for people to try and do them down. It's tiresome and the press should stop giving them a platform to moan like buggery.

 

No need to apologise to me, mate, I'm not religious in the manner I was. I have a more mystical/mythological than dogmatic outlook these days, it lets be get madwaeit and bury the guilt under layers of denial. That said, religion is important to all societies, and we shouldn't confuse the decline of particular organised religions with the decline of religiousness. It is precisely because the functionally religious devotion to the multi-cultural form of secularism that is dominant in our academic/media classes that this gets so much airing. Religions are in decline once they lose their ubiquity - that we don't yet understand our multicultural securalism as a religion is testament to the fact that it's still ubiquitous.

Edited November 29, 2010 by bmck

[Super_Ally 0]

Fuck me mate, i've read that twice and i'm still struggling to get my head around it.

 

That's down to me being thick I think though.

 

I think I get your general point though, summed up best by your third sentence.

[bmck 117]

Sorry mate I've writing essays teh whole weekend and today and am in that mode I think. Basically, the idea is that we can only really 'see' religion once it's in decline. For example, Christianity a few hundred years ago was not the same thing as it is now - we now think of it as a choice, but back in the day Christian is just what you were. While some people were, say, devoted Christian, even people who never set foot in Church in their lives would consider themselves Christian - something like what we call cultural christianity. Christianity was implicit in the education system, the newspapers, the writings, everything that the country produced - like you if you lived in a world where everything was blue, you'd have no need for the word blue. People became Christian just by living, not by looking at it and deciding if they wanted to take part. Christianity was just the lense to which everyone, to varying degrees, looked through the world. Kids become Christian by their parents being Christian and so on. It's all these things that people who object to religion dislike - they dislike that religious people don't get there by analysis, but rather just accept values that are simply taken on faith.

 

Fast forward to now and multiculturalism has much of the same characteristics. I don't know many racist people, and it's not because everyone's sat down at looked at the issue rationally - indeed, it's barely possible to look at rationally. The idea that all humans are equal regardless of the colour of their skin can only be taken on faith as a value - and this value tends to be transmitted implicitly through tv, media, education etc. Racism is just one branch whose root is multicultural tolerance - something taken as an article of faith, and is believed in with varying degrees of religious devotion by almost everyone but the fringes of society (BNP etc). Just like particularly devoted Christians would sometimes go raj an do absurd things like torture people to save their soul, those particularly devoted to tolerance will crusade against anything that even looks like intolerance with religious fervour and feel righteous while doing it. Just like in days go by, if some prominant person said "That's unchristian" the papers or whatever the opinion making thing was at that time would have to listen, and take it seriously, because Christianity was the invisible foundation of everything , now if someone says "that's bigotted" or "that's intolerant" we are so scared, in the way only religious people can be, of being intolerant that we'll endure and give air time to anyone that says it. People don't understand our devotion to tolerance as religious - containing within itself all the virtues and horrors that come with religion - because we're still in that historical period. They rather accept devotion to tolerance on faith and think everything else is (false) forms of religion.

 

Why we seem to get so much stick is because we think the RCC is crap. One of the internal contradictions of cultural tolerance is that in thinking all religions are equally good you implicitly think all religious are equally bad. What's most important is that you respect their right to exist. By singing No Pope in Rome and such things we commit, essentially, the cardinal sin of religious tolerance - you're allowed to believe in your religion (or your lack of religion), but not if you start believing in it so much it causes you to think other religions are bad.

Not sure if that's any better

Edited November 29, 2010 by bmck

[Gazza_8 233]

Sorry mate I've writing essays teh whole weekend and today and am in that mode I think.

 

I hope they don't mark you on your spelling.

 

[bmck 117]

Thanks for that Gaz.

[54andcounting 0]

I love to see the bheggars getting humped and I hate those fans of their's who chant in favour of the IRA and who feel the need to demonstrate against red poppies - does that make me a bigot?

 

Also I have relatives who are catholics, but none of them ever go to Sunday Mass, most of them think these conspiricy theories are ridiculous - are they bigots?