Another thing I woke up to yesterday was the news that Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, had – along with other Scottish Catholic bishops – written a letter to be read out to all Catholic congregations in Scotland bemoaning the fact that the Scottish government is to legislate to equalise the status of marriage between different and same sex couples.

I’m not sure why it makes a difference to gay people; a civil partnership between a heterosexual couple is effectively a marriage, so why isn’t a same sex one?

I could see some force to the Cardinal’s point if priests were to be forced to officiate at such unions but they, along with Church of Scotland Ministers, Episcopalian Rectors, Rabbis, Muslim Imams etc, are expressly not being required to do that. These marriages will be civil, not ecclesiastical, affairs. (And let’s remember marriage between heterosexuals is not legal until it has been registered by the state. The word of priest, minister or whatever religious official is legally neither here nor there.)

Cardinal O’Brien’s statement that the Scottish government has “refused to listen” to his views is, I think, misplaced. The Government has listened, it just hasn’t done what he wanted. His complaint about their “refusal” amounts to a desire on his part to have a veto on Scottish social policy. Is this a position which any churchman should be taking up?

How many Catholics are likely to agree with the Cardinal on this point anyway? For countless years the churches have been on the wrong side of most arguments as regards social change – from slavery to women’s rights and now to the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and other sexualities. They have come round to the views of the wider world in previous cases and found biblical justification for them. Who is to say this will not happen with gay issues?

Scotland is not a theocracy. (Yet. And some would say thank God for it!) And if it were….

Which other religion does Cardinal O’Brien think ought to have a veto on social policy? For what is sauce for his Catholic gander is sauce for other religions’ geese. Would he be comfortable living under Sharia Law, for example? If Scottish Government policy is to be dictated by one religion or denomination it has to be dictated by them all. The Roman Catholic Church has no special place in Scottish politics – except in so far as its denominational schools are subsidised and underwritten by the Scottish state. That is a source of division that has underscored the running sore of sectarianism that has beset Scottish life particularly in the west of Scotland, but also more widely, since the Reformation.

Scotland fought long and hard, and bloodily, for centuries, from the Reformation through the Civil Wars of the reign of Charles I up to and arguably beyond the Jacobite rebellions for the right for its citizens to think and believe for themselves and not to have others tell them what to think and do.

Is this really the pot which Cardinal O’Brien wishes to stir?

Scottish Catholics have been known to complain that they are somehow disadvantaged or excluded from Scottish life in its widest sense. (I personally, though not a Catholic, think this has for quite some time now verged on the ludicrous. There are any number of high profile Catholics in Scottish public life.) They cannot at the same time insist on this perceived subjugation and also that their view on a particular issue should prevail. Or can Cardinal O’Brien not see the contradiction?