Tuesday 15 September 2009

Vatican newspaper should not have given Tony Blair an easy ride

Today's Guardian reports on a double-page spread interview with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper. The Guardian says:
"Weeks after a packed Catholic conference in Italy gave Blair an ovation for his words about the universality of Catholicism, the pope's newspaper was equally effusive, calling the convert 'a gentleman, educated, smiley, courteous in a way few know how to be'.

"Letting slip the Vatican's possible ambition for Blair, the paper also described him as 'a probable future president of the European Union'.

"With a double page spread at his disposal, Blair served up a mix of anecdotes about his conversion and strong indications of how faith is at the heart of every step he takes."
I pose the question: Are there subversive elements at work within the Vatican who are intent on appeasing Barack Obama and Tony Blair and their anti-life policies? Imagine if Obama and Blair were committed racists rather than being committed to their anti-life and anti-family policies. Would L'Osservatore Romano afford them such a generous platform? I hope not. But surely this same standard should apply to attacks on the sanctity of human life. As Michel Schooyans, one of the Vatican's leading scholars has pointed out in a masterly analysis, Obama and Blair, with their anti-life, anti-family agenda, are seeking to undermine both law and religion respectively.

Tony Blair has refused to repudiate his anti-life, anti-family record and he has also attacked the Catholic Church's teaching on pro-family issues. In my letter to Tony Blair (11 January 2008), I wrote:
"We would...be most grateful if, in the light of your reception into the Catholic Church, you would tell us if you now repudiate:
• voting in 1990 for abortion up to birth three times during Parliamentary debates on what became the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990;
• personally endorsing your government’s policy of supplying abortion and birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parental knowledge or consent;
• your government introducing legislation which has led to a law which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients;
• your government’s commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right.
• personally championing destructive experiments on human embryos."
The reply I received from Mr Blair's office - in fact, from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation - refused point-blank to answer any of the questions that I had put.

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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