Baroness Warsi - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz Catholic News New Zealand Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:28:39 +0000 en-NZ hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-cathnewsfavicon-32x32.jpg Baroness Warsi - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz 32 32 70145804 The Baroness and the Pope https://cathnews.co.nz/2012/02/28/the-baroness-and-the-pope/ Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:32:35 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=19924

If inter-faith gestures — gimmicks though they might be — help reduce tensions, then let's have more of them. Such was the media hype that anyone even sleep-walking through Britain last week couldn't have failed to notice the news of the country's "first female Muslim Cabinet Minister", Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, launching a spirited defence of Read more

The Baroness and the Pope... Read more]]> If inter-faith gestures — gimmicks though they might be — help reduce tensions, then let's have more of them.

Such was the media hype that anyone even sleep-walking through Britain last week couldn't have failed to notice the news of the country's "first female Muslim Cabinet Minister", Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, launching a spirited defence of Christianity against "militant secularism" on a "historic" visit to the Vatican where she had a private audience with the Pope.

There was breathless media coverage of her speech in which she told the Vatican that British Muslims stood "side by side with the Pope in fighting for faith"; warned against "militant secularisation" of Christian Europe; and argued for Europe to become "more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity".

Christianity, she said, was an intrinsic part of British and European life and Christian values were as important to its followers as to the people of other faiths.

"You cannot extract Christian foundations from the evolutions of our nations any more than you can erase the spires from our landscape," she said pointing out that her own life, growing up in a northern England milltown, had been influenced by Christian values.

A picture of Baroness Warsi with the Pope, her head respectfully covered with a black dupatta, splashed on newspaper front pages became a defining image of her Vatican visit.

Sceptics can be forgiven for dismissing the event as a tacky political gimmick by the Conservative party to demonstrate its "inclusiveness" and cultural pluralism. Remember — they may remind you — the fury that Prime Minister David Cameron caused among Muslim immigrants when in a speech in Munich last year he savaged multiculturalism saying it encouraged "passive tolerance" of Muslim extremism? And that, too, on a day when the racist English Defence League was holding a major anti-Muslim protest in a predominantly Muslim town. He was accused of "writing propaganda material for EDL".

Similarly, Baroness Warsi can be accused (indeed she has been by a section of her community) of allowing herself to be used by the party as a token Muslim to promote its agenda. Read more

Sources

 

The Baroness and the Pope]]> 19924 To defend the Church's role is to defend faith as a whole https://cathnews.co.nz/2012/02/24/to-defend-the-churchs-role-is-to-defend-faith-as-a-whole/ Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:31:11 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=19635

The Queen is right - our national religion is a force for unity and a channel of peace. William Blake famously asked "And did those feet, in ancient time, / Walk upon England's mountains green?" The short, factual answer is, almost certainly, "No." There is no evidence that Jesus ever made it to these shores. If Read more

To defend the Church's role is to defend faith as a whole... Read more]]> The Queen is right - our national religion is a force for unity and a channel of peace.

William Blake famously asked "And did those feet, in ancient time, / Walk upon England's mountains green?" The short, factual answer is, almost certainly, "No." There is no evidence that Jesus ever made it to these shores.

If you have the cast of mind of Richard Dawkins, that's it, end of subject. Jesus didn't come here, and it is pernicious to have silly fantasies about it. Anyway, you say, Jesus is not the Son - or, as Blake's next lines state, the Lamb - of God. It's all a delusion, and the Professor Richard Dawkins Foundation for Enlightening People Stupider Than Professor Richard Dawkins has just proved by statistics that people calling themselves Christians know little about their faith and don't believe most of what it teaches.

But of course this sort of approach does not satisfy most people. England, Britain, Jesus, God, poetry, identity, truth, faith - they are all mixed up somehow, and we care about them, even if it is hard to express why.

There is a great deal of talk around about faith, and why it matters for our society. In the past week, it has come not only from the Queen, in an interestingly strong intervention, but also from the Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi, who is a Muslim. Taking coals to Newcastle, Lady Warsi went to Rome to tell the Pope that Europe should become "more confident" in its Christianity. The former home secretary, Charles Clarke, is an agnostic, but he is chairing a series of debates with the excellent think tank Theos to promote the importance of faith in our public affairs. Before Christmas, David Cameron, asserting that Britain remained a Christian country, defended faith on the grounds that "we can't fight something with nothing". Read more

Sources

 

 

To defend the Church's role is to defend faith as a whole]]> 19635