The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Toil and Trouble

Having been petitioned to pardon the four thousand or so people who were tortured and executed in Scotland for crimes against Christianity, the Scottish parliament appears to have suffered an attack of moral relativism, after the fashion of the Very Reverend Joseph Augustine Di Noia some time ago. A pardon would be inappropriate, the honourable members decided, because the victims, like Helen Duncan, "were tried and convicted in the laws at the time"; and laws, you know, are passed by parliaments and therefore can never be wrong. "Further, it may be particularly difficult to apply modern knowledge and concepts of morality to events which took place centuries ago"; and by the same token one never knows when witch-hunts of one kind or another may happen to come back in fashion. Nevertheless, certain elements are campaigning for at least a memorial, "as a reminder of the dangers of scapegoating innocent people when a society feels under pressure"; the main danger being that the vulnerable will suffer and die while their persecutors gain riches and influence wherewith to bask in their Calvinist probity. Modern knowledge is a wonderful thing. "I always hesitate to use words like barbaric," said a political historian from Edinburgh University, "because the people who did this regarded themselves as civilised, and some were as well educated as we are." Provided one regards oneself as innocent, by such brilliant logic, one cannot commit a crime; and we all know that now, as in the Middle Ages, one can get away with virtually anything provided one has the appropriate school tie. How comforting to know that some concepts of morality never change.

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