Catholic Church Bitch Slaped for 'Selfish and Hedonistic Wasteland' Statement

Yesterday, in advance of Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK, Edmund Adamus, an adviser to the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, said that Britain: had become "the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death," had been "the most permissively anti-life and progressively anti-family and marriage, in essence one of the most anti-Catholic landscapes, culturally speaking, and represented a selfish, hedonistic wasteland objectifies women for sexual gratification". This from a spokesman for a religious institution that has knowingly covered up the worldwide rape of children and youth - not to mention other reprehensible actions. Now, an op-ed in the Independent has fired back and lays out the case as to why Britain is far more moral than the hypocrites and scolds within the Catholic Church hierarchy and Catholic apologists such as William Donohue and the Knights of Columbus. Here are some highlights:
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I woke up as usual yesterday in the "geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death" – and very pleasant it was. . . . congratulating myself on being a citizen of a country that doesn't stone women to death, hang gay men from cranes or murder people who change their religion. I mean, how great is that? I love living in the "selfish, hedonistic wasteland" that is London – both quotes come from one Edmund Adamus, who is apparently a senior British Catholic and an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster – and I just wish more nations would follow our example.
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Frankly, I'm tired of hearing religious bigots running down this country. For all its faults – crap public transport, Nick Clegg popping up everywhere and a national obsession with Simon Cowell – Britain is still one of the most civilised places in the world to live. It's not Iran, where prisoners are subjected to rape and mock executions; it isn't Saudi Arabia either, despite Mr Adamus's downright peculiar belief that we're more anti-Catholic than the Chinese or the Saudis. (Might I suggest he tries walking along a street in Riyadh carrying a crucifix and a Bible?) The Catholic Church has picked up this habit of dissing secular culture from hardline Muslims, who dislike pretty much the same things: gay relationships, equal rights for women and the freedom to mock religion.
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This latest row has brought into the open what many people suspected in the run-up to a controversial papal visit to Britain; some Vatican officials, it seems, are alarmed by the threat of demonstrations and increasingly regard the UK as a hostile country.
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The confusion that's been exposed by this latest attack on life-loving secular culture is actually a very old one, namely the pernicious myth that morality resides in sexual behaviour. Sexuality has always been an obsession for Christian churches and the Vatican's teachings on the subject are so severe that millions of Catholics – including Cherie Blair, wife of the former Prime Minister, who wrote in her autobiography about her contraceptive methods – simply ignore them.
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[T]here are more important issues on which the moral standing of a nation should be judged. Here's one of them: when an earthquake devastated Haiti earlier this year, British donations to disaster relief eventually reached £101m. Now that floods have devastated Pakistan, leaving millions of people homeless, the British public has contributed another £42m to the Disasters Emergency Committee. Does that really sound like the response of a nation which is supposedly the "geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death"?