Qui Habet Aures Audiendi Audiat

Although it has been increasingly apparent for quite some time that the Church of Rome is implacably opposed to gays unless they happen to wear cassocks and abuse children, a number of people have professed surprise that a Catholic archdiocese took action to protect pupils at its faith schools from the heinous doctrine that non-heterosexuals might have much the same rights as the rest of us. A gay author of children's and young adults' books had been invited to visit two schools; the archdiocese objected, citing the Church's "unequivocal and well-known theological and moral precepts," and when the school governors proceeded with the visits, the archdiocese cancelled the visits and sacked the governors. By way of explanation, the chaplain of one school foamed an apocalyptic email to parents, proclaiming that the Church's hitherto unsullied international reputation had been imperilled by the soul-destroying presence of a consenting adult, and exulting in the defeat of woke tyranny by muscular Christian truth. A Catholic website backed the decision with a sermon upon the divinely bequeathed pedagogical privilege of Mussolini's approved club of eunuchs and rapists. Meanwhile, apparently under the impression that the stricter points of Catholic doctrine had been subsumed beneath a soggy post-Section 28 fuzz of liberal Britishness, some parents expressed shock and dismay at the idea that a British schooling might be less concerned with education than with obedience and licensed persecution.