Little wonder that the sneering, liberal classes in Britain exulted at the picture of Prince Charles shaking hands with Robert Mugabe, writes Kevin Myers.
For them, it meant that once again the prince had made a fool of himself; but in reality, it shows they simply don't understand the significance of the sign of peace during Mass. After all, there is no point of offering a sign of peace only to those whom you like or do not know and towards whom you harbour no ill-will.
That sign of peace is intended to be between enemies. At the very moment it is made, it is the wish of the Church that you open your heart even to your sworn foe and offer him peace. Such a declaration between those who are already united in peace is a meaningless charade - which is why I loathe the handshake at Mass. Indeed, just about the only time that that this winsome little gesture has ever had any meaning was when Charles took Mugabe's hand. Is it so wrong to wish peace to an evil man in the Christian hope that virtue and peace might triumph in his immortal soul?
Moreover, what is this thing, the Catholic Church, which everyone feels entitled to scold about its beliefs? The endless carping about the late Pope's "conservatism", his failure to ordain women, his reverence for the Virgin Mary, his suspicion of liberation theology, his use of his supreme authority to assert his will would suggest that up until the arrival of Karol Wojtyla, the papacy was the Vatican chapter of the Socialist Sisters' International.
The late Pope was the CEO of the Catholic church. Like all CEOs, he sought to have like-minded people working with him. If the pope had been an active lesbian, do you really think she would have appointed bishops who were opposed to the ordination of women and practising homosexuals? Are not discipline, loyalty and the establishment of common goals the defining features of all successful organisations? What kind of fool would appoint as subordinates those he knew to be opponents of his objectives? It is not the Vatican which works in this way, but the world. McDonalds does not employ militant vegans as bosses. Monsanto does not appoint proselytising organic farmers as line managers.
What you believe today about the ordination of women, or contraception or homosexuality are just that: today's beliefs. Tomorrow's beliefs are another thing entirely. The right to own slaves was once passionately defended by the self-same American secularists who meanwhile ardently wished to free the state from religious influence; the Catholic church meanwhile opposed slavery. Who was right? It is nearly 40 years since Pope Paul VI rejected the advice of his councillors and decided that the contraceptive pill was intrinsically sinful - a judgment for which he has been condemned down the following decades. But what has been the consequence of the pill? A universal separation between the sexual act, marriage and childbirth, and across all of Europe a plummeting birth rate which is now so serious that many countries are no longer replacing their existing populations.
You might be agnostic, neutral or passionately enthusiastic about such changes - but you can hardly expect the Catholic Church to share such passivity or such approval. It is the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, not the Kinsey Institute into Sexual Satisfaction, not www.orgasmsonline.com, not the Society For Creating Fewer Christians.
The Catholic Church's attitude towards contraception might indeed be wholly wrong, and accordingly rank alongside the sale of indulgences, the support of feudalism or the incorporation of Copernicism into doctrine. On the other hand, as the numbers of practising European Christians fall, people might see that the effortless indulgence of sexual desire without children might mean lots of fun - but it is also a social and demographic disaster.
I offer no opinion on this. But I do know the Church judges things by centuries, not by current fads. Moreover, critics of the Church invariably fail to take into account the genuinely held beliefs of its hierarchy, as if it were composed of mere apparatchiks, following the party line. But what if a Pope genuinely believed it was not within his power to permit the ordination of women, and his cardinals agreed with him? What if they believed it was not God's will to have female priests? Never mind the rights of the wrongs of any argument over this: matters of faith are untouched and untroubled by logic or reason. If a pope passionately believes he cannot in conscience allow women priests, is he to do so nonetheless, in order to placate the feminist and liberal lobbies? Then what kind of man would that make him?
Yes, one can argue that the Catholic Church has a closed mind - but is it any more closed than those who argue their right to impose their agenda on its practices and theology? Moreover, once the Church admits women or actively homosexual priests to the priesthood, that particular door does not then get shut - and within a generation or so, the Catholic Church could well be entirely transformed.
Excellent, today's liberals and feminists might declare; so much the better! Very possibly. But you liberals can hardly expect the current Consistory of Cardinals to agree with you, can you, or blame them for working towards a quite different future? But you do. Because in your eyes, those who dissent from the Divine Doctrines of Dogmatic Liberal Secularism are by definition morally wrong. For new John Charleses are among us - but instead of croziers, they wield NUJ cards.