The Catholic diocese of Brentwood website is advertising the annual conference of its Commission for Justice and Social Responsibility. The conference is to be opened by Bishop Thomas McMahon and it's to be addressed by Jon Cruddas MP for Dagenham and Rainham on social justice issues. He is described in the media as a practising Roman Catholic.If the Brentwood Diocese's Commission for Justice and Social Responsibility was actively planning to endanger vulnerable children, in the sense clearly understood and explained by Catholic teaching, they could not have done better than to invite Jon Cruddas MP, who has told Andrew Marr, the TV political journalist:
“I fully support the gay adoption proposals the Government put into place.”The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the other hand, teaches that allowing children to be adopted by couples in homosexual unions "does violence to these children":
"As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in [homosexual] unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case."If the Commission for Justice and Social Responsibility had been actively planning to undermine the work of the Catholic Church and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in defence of the family, based on marriage - the permanent, exclusive union of one man and one woman - it could not have done better than invite Jon Cruddas to speak to their annual conference on social justice issues a man described as:
"Someone who believes ... that same-sex couples should be provided partnership rights equivalent to those of married heterosexual couples ... "and who has expressed his pride in his voting record in support of the homosexual agenda.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has very clear teaching in respect of Catholic politicians and legislation in favour of homosexual unions. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says:
"If it is true that all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians. Faced with legislative proposals in favour of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are to take account of the following ethical indications.And if the Commission for Justice and Social Responsibility were actively planning to undermine the work of pro-life groups and Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life, they could not do better than invite an MP who says he supports a woman's right to choose [abortion]; that he's perfectly happy with the current situation (which provides legal sanction for the killing of 550 unborn babies daily); and who has voted 18 times with the anti-life lobby, for example voting in favour of the anti-life Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act at second reading (which denotes approval for the bill's principles) - a law designed to kill millions of innocent human beings deliberately created never to be born.
When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral."
This is not my idea of justice and peace.
Concerned readers of this post may wish to express their views to the Brentwood Diocese's Commission of Justice and Social Responsibility.
Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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