A HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE BRITISH CATHOLIC CHURCH
This week the government have confirmed that, subjects to ratification by the two Houses of Parliament, from this April, the Sexual Orientation Regulations will become law. These regulations will have numerous effects upon our ability to live the Catholic faith without incurring legal sanction.
The most immediate and therefore currently prominent of these will be the forcing of Catholic adoption agencies to cooperate with the institutionalization of gay partnerships. The Scottish Bishops have made it clear that their agencies will flout the law and take the consequences. Cardinal Cormac has highlighted that this is just the first step towards further anti-Catholic discrimination. The dam has been breached, however subtly.
We discussed the adoption issue last week. For now let us remember this fundamental principle: to lessen the suffering of one person by increasing the long-term suffering and corruption of someone else is not right, and in the end will only have decreased the suffering of the former temporarily.
So if one takes the extreme case (which has never happened) of a couple, who publicly identify themselves as a homosexual partnership, approaching a Catholic adoption agency – and (again purely hypothetically) the agency has a very needy child ‘in care’ and no other appropriate couple to place the child with. Still it cannot place the child with such a couple. This is because it goes against the very nature of what the Catholic Church is in its mission to bring true love and peace to the people of the world in this life and the next. The Church of Christ cannot cooperate publically with what is, in its rational and revealed belief, the undermining of the true meaning of sex, and so, for instance, of the family and respect for innocent human life.
This breakdown has already begun and its fruits are all around us to see, the increasing number of children in care is just one aspect. For Christ to cooperate with this newly invented morality would actually spell the end of coherent morality itself. We trust that, through the Cross, there will always be a better solution for children in care. Catholic adoption agencies, acknowledged by all to be particularly good at their job, have found this to be the case – as have all who are faithful to Christ. Please write to our M.P. concerning forthcoming vote.
Next week, as promised: other consequences of these regulations.
The most immediate and therefore currently prominent of these will be the forcing of Catholic adoption agencies to cooperate with the institutionalization of gay partnerships. The Scottish Bishops have made it clear that their agencies will flout the law and take the consequences. Cardinal Cormac has highlighted that this is just the first step towards further anti-Catholic discrimination. The dam has been breached, however subtly.
We discussed the adoption issue last week. For now let us remember this fundamental principle: to lessen the suffering of one person by increasing the long-term suffering and corruption of someone else is not right, and in the end will only have decreased the suffering of the former temporarily.
So if one takes the extreme case (which has never happened) of a couple, who publicly identify themselves as a homosexual partnership, approaching a Catholic adoption agency – and (again purely hypothetically) the agency has a very needy child ‘in care’ and no other appropriate couple to place the child with. Still it cannot place the child with such a couple. This is because it goes against the very nature of what the Catholic Church is in its mission to bring true love and peace to the people of the world in this life and the next. The Church of Christ cannot cooperate publically with what is, in its rational and revealed belief, the undermining of the true meaning of sex, and so, for instance, of the family and respect for innocent human life.
This breakdown has already begun and its fruits are all around us to see, the increasing number of children in care is just one aspect. For Christ to cooperate with this newly invented morality would actually spell the end of coherent morality itself. We trust that, through the Cross, there will always be a better solution for children in care. Catholic adoption agencies, acknowledged by all to be particularly good at their job, have found this to be the case – as have all who are faithful to Christ. Please write to our M.P. concerning forthcoming vote.
Next week, as promised: other consequences of these regulations.
posted by Sinead Reekie at 10:15 am