Luckily I managed to intercept the 144-page document as early as page 15. I was printing an article from the Guardian’s website and hadn’t bothered to scroll down first to check how long the responses ran. The article was by Jackie Ashley, whose columns I frequently find well-judged and illuminating. This one - ‘Cardinals, back off from this war with women and state’ (June 4 2007) - had evidently hit a nerve. In it she lambasted the Catholic Cardinals who had been so reckless as to take the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act to remind Catholic MPs of their moral responsibilities. Sadly the piece recycled a number of lamentable but all-too-familiar misconceptions regarding the proper influence of religious convictions on public policy.

The Cardinals had suggested that Catholic MPs who voted pro-choice ought to refrain from receiving communion. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor had urged Catholic MPs to inform themselves about the church’s prohibition of abortion so that they could vote ‘with consistency and integrity’. Rather more pyrotechnically, Cardinal O’Brien had claimed that the current rate of abortion in Britain amounted to ‘two Dunblane massacres a day’. It was no surprise that Ashley recoiled at the ‘ferocity’ of such rhetoric.

But it is one thing to take exception to particular instances of supposedly offensive political language. It is quite another to claim, as Ashley did, that the Cardinals’ language and thinking were ‘wholly against our constitution and tradition’. This reminds me of Azar Nafisi’s wonderful novel Reading Lolita in Tehran which records a young boy nervously confessing to having had ‘an illegal dream’. I wasn’t aware that the British political tradition knew the concept of an ‘unconstitutional thought’ – but leave that aside. But in attacking the Cardinals’ pastoral injunction to Catholic MPs as ‘unconstitutional’, what could she possibly mean? 

First, she seemed to be asserting that it was improper for MPs to follow their consciences rather than the majority wishes of their constituents. ‘What is dangerous is the demand that Catholic MPs must vote for their religion first and their constituents’ views second’. But for MPs to ‘vote for their religion’ is no more and no less than for any MP to vote according to their conscientious convictions. One of the online respondents was quick to point out that to require MPs always to rank constituents’ views above their own consciences would mean that capital punishment would be back on the statute book in short order. What is against the British political tradition is to regard MPs as mere delegates bound by the mandates of their constituents rather than representatives trusted to exercise their own independent judgement.

Second, and obscuring her first point, Ashley went on to say that MPs are not elected ‘as Catholics’ but as representatives of a political party - without noticing that the stance of an MP’s party on a particular issue may not at all be representative of the majority views of their constituents. Need I mention Iraq?

Third, she claimed that by urging MPs to vote pro-life when clear majorities of the British public are pro-choice amounts to the Catholic church ‘seeking to impose its beliefs on the rest of us’. It’s hard to grasp how this lamest of all secularist arguments manages to limp on today, but it’s clearly necessary to go on repeating the elementary rejoinder to it: all laws ‘impose’ particular views on citizens, and at least some of them do so against the views of a majority. And all citizens and organisations are entitled to ‘propose’ whatever laws they believe promote the public good. It’s up to parliament to decide which of these democratic propositions should become legislative impositions, and last time I checked the Catholic church did not control the workings of the Palace of Westminster.

I find it hard to believe that, on reflection, Ashley wouldn’t acknowledge all of this - which suggests that her real objection lies elsewhere. It turns out her problem is not with the exercise of conscience, only religiously-informed conscience; not with democratically-decided legislation, only those instances of it that reflect religious views. And in particular her problem is with MPs who in deciding how to vote recognise a moral authority transcending the will of the majority:

‘If any MP really thinks their personal religious views take precedence over everything else then they should leave the House of Commons. Their place is in church, mosque, synagogue or temple. Parliament is the place for compromises, for negotiations in a secular sphere under the general overhead light of the liberal tradition. So liberalism is privileged, is it? Yes. For without it, none of these religions ... would have such an easy time. Cardinals, come to terms with the society we live in ...’

But here she misstates again: under the regime she advocates, it is not liberalism but secularism that is privileged. For while the principle of freedom of conscience she rightly defends has been championed by liberalism, it is actually undermined by secularism. The kind of secularism she favours closes down freedom and pluralism. The inconsistency in her own position makes this clear: she is offended by Cardinals who exhort Catholic MPs to faithfully represent a significant minority position among British citizens and not be paralysed into silence by the power of majority sentiment, yet she is quite prepared to urge consistently Catholic MPs to quit parliament altogether. Now which position is more consistent with British constitutional tradition?

Dr. Jonathan Chaplin is the first Director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics.