Oh dear, another pontifical pronouncement condemns me to hell, it seems:

Vatican condemns Amnesty over abortion

By Malcolm Moore
Last Updated: 2:18am BST 14/06/2007

The Vatican has ordered all Catholic organisations and individuals to stop giving money to Amnesty International in protest at the human rights organisation's stance on abortion.

Amnesty, which previously had been neutral on the subject, said in April that countries that had laws making abortion illegal should drop them because tough anti-abortion penalties led to a high proportion of backstreet terminations. Mexico City has recently passed a law decriminalising abortion.

Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and one of the Vatican's most senior prelates, said in an interview with the National Catholic Register: "The inevitable consequence [of Amnesty's decision] will be the end of all financing from Catholic organisations and individual Catholics."

Well, not this Catholic, I can assure you. I have a feeling that on the day of judgement the fact that I tried to do my best by my fellow human beings by fighting the forces of oppression and torture via what seems to be the most respected international organization on that particular playing field will stand me in quite good stead. I don't support abortion, but nor do I support coercion. And, let's face it, the line Amnesty has taken on abortion deals mainly with the most traumatic situations, such as women who are put in that position by evil acts in the first place like rape (often institutionalized as a means of torture) - and on those even the most hard-core anti-abortionists' opinions tend to wobble and fragment a bit.

Indeed, my membership of Amnesty helps to assuage my conscience that I am also a member of a body, in the Roman Catholic Church that has, over centuries, been amongst the most egregious supra-national torturers, via crusades, conquistadores, forced conversions, bloody Mary, the Holy Office and, more recently, tacit at least support for some of the most oppressive regimes simply because they are Catholic regimes.

It was Charles Kennedy I think who stood up at a party conference one year as leader and suggested that if there was one organization all Liberal democrats should also be a member of it was Amnesty.  I agree, and I hope he still does, as a Catholic and a senior Liberal Democrat, whatever this meddling priest wants to tell us.