Column

?The crude message offered to the public is devout Catholic equals weird and dangerous?

The Labour Party once had a problem with the Militant Tendency. Sections of it now think that it has a difficulty with a "Catholic tendency". That was the phrase used by The Independent on Sunday last week, echoing language previously used in The Observer a few months earlier.

The context here was the allegation that Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, had sought to allow Catholic (and other religious) adoption agencies an exemption from anti-discrimination laws so that they could turn away gay couples. This stance, and other "previous form", has led to the "Catholic tendency" accusation.

Ms Kelly has been something of a target for some time. From the very moment that she was catapulted into the Cabinet at the age of 36 as Education Secretary in late 2004, parts of the media have treated the words Opus Dei as if they were her middle names. When it was revealed that she had decided to send her dyslexic son to a private school, the hostile frenzy went into overdrive. The crude message to the public can be summarised in the following equation: Ruth Kelly = devout Catholic = weird and dangerous.

It is not necessary to be an intimate of Ms Kelly's brand of Catholicism to recognise that a threat to one is a threat to all. She is not the first to be attacked in this fashion. Those with longer memories will recall that in 1992, shortly before being appointed Education Secretary, the Conservative John Patten, in an interview for The Spectator, freely acknowledged his faith and uttered the line: "I worry about God; I hope he might worry about me." From the second he was in situ at the department, a vociferous lobby implied that he might be poised to introduce a subtle brainwashing of the nation's children to the same end as the Spanish Inquisition.

I should concede at the outset, as a relatively liberal Catholic, that I am not entirely convinced that my instincts would be the same as those which are said to be held by Ms Kelly. But not only is she wholly entitled to her position, she should be proud of it. On this, as on many other ethical questions, the constituency that has doubts about liberal social policy does not consist of those of faith alone but many more besides. It is a malign trick to brand anyone who does not fit into a certain consensus as a nutter whose opinions are all but indistinguishable from those of Islamist fanatics.

That appears to be the tactic favoured by Labour MPs such as Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant, who have, as stated by reports, mobilised against the "Catholic tendency". This is in part a revolt against the Prime Minister personally. He is portrayed as having a sympathetic ear for Ms Kelly because he himself is the subject of similar "papist" influences. There is the expectation that when Mr Blair leaves the scene, politics will become more vigorously secular.

It is an expectation that should not be encouraged. Let us start with Ms Kelly. She is, it is muttered, not always the best advertisement for her own cause. She is reluctant to talk openly about her faith - a trait that reinforces the notion that her strain of Catholicism is secretive, conspiratorial and menacing. But if she did come out and discuss her notion of her relationship with the Church and God she would then doubtless be branded as some sort of zealot, even an extremist. It is a no-win dilemma. She is trapped between being branded as an unapologetic Catholic or an undercover one.

In a sense we have scarcely moved on at all since 100 years ago when the Conservatives implied that the Liberals could not be trusted in Government because of the deviant manner in which they worshipped, except today it is the modern version of the Liberals who are arguing among themselves as to whether the religious within them are trustworthy.

All of this is a sharp contrast with more recent politics. It was not but four years ago that commentators noted that between them Mr Blair, Iain Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy, the three party leaders, constituted two and a half Catholics. Throw in Michael Martin, the Speaker, and, it could be contended, admittedly a tad lippantly, that those who had once been denied electoral and social emancipation now appeared to be running the show. It has not taken long for old prejudices - or Rome-ophobia as I like to call it - to resurface. It has been Ms Kelly who has been subjected to it in this instance. It will be all sorts of Catholics if it is not addressed forthrightly.