The day before he was chosen to lead the Catholic Church, the future Pope Benedict XVI made international headlines when he warned his fellow Cardinals about the "dictatorship of relativism" that he saw gripping Western culture. Flourishing in an age when "having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism," this dictatorship is one that "does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."

That prognosis struck some of Benedict's critics on the left as too defensive and dour when he first uttered it. But today, nearly five years later, many of those same naysayers are proving him right. Exhibit A is their reaction to Benedict's decision last week to welcome tradition-minded Anglicans en masse into the Catholic Church.

Responding to a demand from Anglicans who long have sought a way to join the Catholic Church without abandoning their Anglican identity, the pope authorized the creation of a new canonical structure that allows these converts to retain some liturgical riches of their Anglican heritage while uniting with Rome.

The decision buoyed the spirits of many self-described Anglo-Catholics who feel marginalized and betrayed by the Anglican Communion's willingness to change age-old Christian teachings to suit contemporary sexual mores. Recent years have seen fierce debates between Anglicans who support their church's ordination of women priests, appointment of openly gay bishops and blessing of same-sex marriages and those who see such innovations as inconsistent with Scripture and 2,000 years of Christian tradition.

Although members of the latter group feel compelled by conscience to object to what they see as political correctness perverting longstanding Christian doctrine, their perspective received little attention in last week's news reports on the subject.

No sooner had the Vatican's decision been announced than critics began berating Benedict as a sheep-stealer and the would-be Catholic converts as bigots. Interpreting the announcement through the lens of contemporary sexual politics, the vast majority of mainstream media commentaries on the subject suggested that the only reason the Catholic Church would want these theologically conservative Anglicans, and the only reason these Anglicans would swim the Tiber, is because of a shared animus toward gays and women and a contempt for progress and equality.

The possibility that the Catholic Church's commitment to defending traditional marriage and the tradition of an all-male priesthood stems from anything other than bias, and that those Anglicans attracted by that commitment could be anything other than narrow-minded, cold-hearted simpletons, never seems to have occurred to many who pronounced publicly on this development. As in so many other public debates over these hot-button issues, those making the most noise about "tolerance" and "openness" proved themselves more eager to personally attack their opponents as sexists and homophobes than to engage in substantive debate.

There is nothing new about this dynamic, of course. In today's dictatorship of relativism, such ad hominem attacks increasingly take the place of reasoned argument. And the blowback can be vicious for anyone targeted by the self-appointed tolerance police, whether it's a beauty queen who answers honestly about her definition of marriage, a scientist who publicly objects to experiments on human embryos or an Anglican attracted to the very Catholic teachings on sex and marriage that our chattering classes so abhor.

The backlash is intended to silence those who dare to defend values that have fallen out of fashion. But sometimes it has the unintended effect of inspiring those contrarian souls who prefer to heed the dictates of their conscience over the heckling of the mob — even when that mob proclaims itself the voice of tolerance and progress.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.