Watching BBC Breakfast, just a few minutes ago, and in the context of a discussion about removing the anti-Catholic bias in the laws about Royal succession (and also the anti-female bias as well) I was very annoyed (but not especially surprised) that the 'expert' commentator, the well known historian David Starkey, was allowed to get away with a vicious attack on the Roman Catholic Church without any question or reigning in by the presenters. With the benefit of my Sky Plus box I was able to retrospectively record his comment and here it is transcribed, verbatim (my emphasis to match his spoken emphasis):
But there's one body in the world that is more profoundly discriminatory than any other and that is the Roman Catholic Church. It does not allow women to be priests, it is profoundly hostile to homosexuals, it has been abusive - the Pope has been abusive - to Islam. You know, isn't it very odd that we are falling over backwards to - ah - alter our customs to a body which is so profoundly discriminatory?
Well, Mr Starkey (or Dr Starkey, although Wikipedia makes no mention of your Doctorate, oddly)... Isn't it odd that you would seek to misrepresent the Church? You're well known for your views - you're well known for your homosexuality, for example, which is a telling point - 'political homosexuals' (or homosexual by opinion) in my observation are typically far more biased, arrogant and opinionated than any who are simply homosexual by orientation. You clearly have an axe to grind: you're clearly the sort of person who believes that 'anything goes' and anyone who doesn't believe the same as you should be anathema, to you, personally, or towards any concept of equal treatment.
But let's not get into an argument about sexual orientation. This is yet another example of the BBC's editors and producers allowing people to comment without any instruction to the presenters to reign them in when making terribly inflammatory comments about Catholics.
We don't believe in women priests because we don't believe women can be priests any more than we believe that women can be men or men can be women. The Church believes that there is an essential character to the priesthood that is indissoluble. It's not a matter of culpable discrimination. It's a matter of intrinsic belief. But Starkey, et al, are not interested in that. So the BBC let them go on the attack on the basis of an incorrect assumption. And the assumption it never questioned and the attack is never forestalled even when it's not relevant to the discussion upon which the invited commentator has been asked to pronounce upon.
Previously I would be fairly uninterested in reports of the BBC's anti-Catholic bias, but it's happened in front of my own eyes this time. And I am annoyed.
