Gay sympathy for Cardinal Keith O’Brien

Were you to try to identify the sort of journalist least likely to feel sympathy for Keith O’Brien, I suppose you’d place near the top of your list a columnist who was (a) an atheist, (b) especially allergic to the totalitarian mumbo-jumbo of the Roman Catholic church, (c) gay, and (d) a strong supporter of the coalition government’s plans for same-sex marriage.

If so, this columnist regrets to disappoint. The downfall of the former Archbishop of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh has come to pass at least in part because he did not mince his words. I admire such people. As to O’Brien’s homosexual behaviour and the charge of hypocrisy… well, to that in a moment.

Keith O’Brien’s career has been distinguished by simplicity of expression. He’s been a bold and talented polemicist. Hateful as I and millions of gay men and women found his language about homosexuality last year, I found myself even at the time blessing the cardinal for this: he did not beat about the bush. Christians really shouldn’t. If hell existed there would be a particular place there for the sort of simpering Anglicanism whose audible embodiment is the piping susuration of the treble voices of boys whose balls have not dropped echoing rhythmless noise around a gloomy Gothic cavity of carved stone. Sounds with no edges, words with no meaning, drifting and melting in a big empty space. Some people find this sweetly senseless music beautiful. It makes me spit. I like to think Jesus would have ejected the choristers along with the money-changers. And then ripped out the organ and smashed the stained glass.