Catholic Links — 8.8.10

A few links mainly of interest to Catholic readers.

Writing in the  New Statesman , Carla Powell demands that liberals end their hostility to the pope , partly because he’s right about something they don’t see.

Moral relativism has become a kind of intellectual disease, weakening the vitality and self-confidence of Europe and the west. Left unchecked, it will destroy us, because it removes our power to resist the distortion of our values, erosion of our liberty and, ultimately, threats to our democratic way of life.

To Britons, schooled in scepticism, this can seem alien, obscure, even threatening. Yet, as an intellectual, Pope Benedict believes that ideas have consequences and that bad ideas can lead to the crushing of the individual.

In another article for the magazine, she declares that  Brits should be more like Italians .

In  The Void Within , the  Economist reports that “Catholicism is hollowing out in its traditional European strongholds. But signs of intriguing new life are springing up at its periphery.”

[A]ll over Europe the child-abuse scandal has made secular powers keener to reassert their authority, and less willing to accept the Catholic church as a semi-autonomous power. In almost every country, therefore, the church is in decline as an institution—a situation in contrast to its vibrancy in Africa, Asia and much of Latin America, and the energy brought by Latinos to the church in the United States. But its decline across Europe is not uniform; in each country, the church faces a different mixture of threats and residual strengths.

In  Sorry, Professor Milbank, Newman was no ecumenist , William Oddie challenges the Radical Orthodoxy leader’s  declaration (Milbank is an Anglican) that the soon to be beatified John Henry Newman “belongs to both Churches and I am sure that our prayers to God through him will aid us in the cause of Church unity.” (For what it’s worth, I think Milbank’s ideas about the Ordinariate for Anglican converts are fanciful at best.)

And in something perhaps of more interest to the Orthodox, which I include because I don’t have anything else and can’t make up an “Orthodox Links,” the  New York Times reports that  Georgian chant is being revived .