The Tablet's deceitful homosexual* manifesto means churches should unsubscribe

The Tablet's latest editorial, "Deepest human desire", argues that "the Church [should] move on with confidence, if not doctrinally then at least pastorally" on the subject of homosexuality". Among other things, it:

• implies that the Church is open to the charge of "anti-­homosexual prejudice, even bigotry"
• says that the Church should "move beyond a sterile state of dis­approval" of homosexuality, lest it "lose the sympathy of wide sections of the public"
• criticises "the Church's inability to comprehend and value [homosexual persons'] emotional lives [and] their relationships"
• implies homosexual love "is to be treasured and respected"
• insists that homosexuals must be defined "positively ... by their affections"
• claims that there are homosexual couples who "demonstrate a constancy and a stability in their partnerships that, rather than causing scandal, set an example to their heterosexual friends and relations"
• questions whether homosexual men or women are unsuitable parents
• questions whether homosexuality is unnatural, and implies that homosexuality is innate rather than acquired

*(The reason why the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality is so important for the pro-life cause can be found in Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae. In paragraph 97, Pope John Paul teaches that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.)

Most perniciously, The Tablet's editorial attempts to co-opt Pope Benedict, the late Cardinal Hume and the former Master-General of the Dominicans. Whilst the quoted words of the latter two leave (to say the least) a lot to be desired, in no way can any words of Pope Benedict be used to endorse homosexuality. The editorial nonetheless claims that "the reintegration of erotic love into Christian spirituality" in his encyclical Deus caritas est "has a direct relevance" which provides a "compelling" basis for normalising homosexual love. Although the editorial admits that "[t]he role of eros in homosexuality the Pope leaves alone", it still uses the Pope's reflection on eros to promote a pro-homosexual agenda, even though the Pope clearly stated that his definition of eros is "love between man and woman" [Deus caritas est, 3]

The Tablet's editorial goes beyond mere opinion, and is in fact a manifesto for homosexual equality. To that end, it is part of a softening-up and consciousness-raising exercise within the Church. It is clear that The Tablet intends to use the months leading up to the Pope's visit as part of a media campaign to entrench an anti-life and anti-family agenda within official Catholic circles. In The Tablet's 30 January edition, Sue Gaisford, The Tablet's literary editor, writes about Kay Gilderdale, who helped cause the death of Lynn, her daughter who had ME:

"[S]he was innocent of attempted murder. Nor - and this is harder - do I think that what she did could be considered sinful."

In contrast, Pope Benedict made clear in his ad limina address to the Scottish bishops that:

"Support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life."

One hundred years ago, St Pius X, a similarly courageous pope, rejected the very essence of Tablet-think when he taught that Catholic teaching

"[does not] evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously"

and

"may [not] be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age".

It is simply a matter of historical fact that official Catholic teaching on pro-life and pro-life family matters has never changed. Some of the Church's earliest documents condemn abortion, euthanasia, contraception and homosexuality.

The only reason I am subscribed to receive (a single copy of) The Tablet is so I can expose its deceitful agenda. For a parish priest, however, to take (i.e. subscribe to) The Tablet in bulk for sale to his parishioners is like a psychiatrist ordering cyanide capsules in bulk for sale to his depressed patients. The Tablet isn't known as "The Bitter Pill" for nothing, not least its notorious dissent from Humanae Vitae.

Some may argue that it's wrong to seek to restrict The Tablet's distribution, arguing that there are other publications on sale at churches which offer a counter-balance to it. Yet, again, it makes no sense to supply poison liberally simply because there are antidotes available. Pope Benedict made this clear in his ad limina address to the English and Welsh bishops:

"[I]t is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate."

We should prepare for Pope Benedict's visit to Britain in September by honouring that teaching and by deleting The Tablet. I am therefore today joining Fr Tim Finigan's campaign "Tabula delenda est" (image courtesy of Fr Finigan) to encourage churches and other Catholic points of sale to cancel their bulk subscriptions.

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Catholic episcopal policy in England and Wales harms the common good

The British Government, it seems, is backing down on its discrimination legislation in the light of stiff opposition to its equality bill from Anglican bishops and others in the House of Lords, from the Catholic bishops, and, last but by no means least, as a result of Pope Benedict's stirring address to the English and Welsh bishops this week in Rome.

However, a much more important development has not yet occurred.

The British Government may have heeded church leaders' warning (including Catholic leaders) in relation equality legislation currently before Parliament, but will Pope Benedict's words be heeded by the Catholic bishops when he told them earlier this week:

" ... I urge you as Pastors to ensure that the Church’s moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended. Fidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others – on the contrary, it serves their freedom by offering them the truth ... " ?

I explained earlier this week the terrible harm done by the Diversity and Equality guidelines published in 2005 by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales (which continue to appear on the Catholic Education Service website) and I concluded:

"With the bishops welcoming and guaranteeing the presence of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers in Catholic schools, is it not completely unrealistic to expect that Catholic sexual morality, including the sacredness of human life before birth, will be taught in these schools?"

The reason why the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality is so important for the pro-life cause can be found in Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae. In paragraph 97, Pope John Paul teaches that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

And shamefully, as I have said before, the Catholic Education Service in England and Wales (CESEW), an agency of the Catholic bishops, is betraying Catholics and non-Catholics alike by its giving general support to the British government’s legislative proposals to require all state schools to teach sex and relationships education throughout the school years (from ages five to 16). (N.B. The state schooling system in England and Wales includes the majority of Catholic schools.) The British government has stated clearly that its proposals have been drafted to entrench a form of sex education which promotes access to abortion and contraception in all state schools, including in Catholic schools.

What a strange world we live in. On the one hand the British Government is seen to bow to church leaders' pressure (including the Catholic bishops of England and Wales) whilst, on the other, the same Catholic bishops are happily complying with the government's bidding! Let's remember, it's our children and grandchildren whose welfare is being put at risk - as well as the culture of life itself - by Catholic episcopal policy in England and Wales. Catholics have a right and a duty to tell the bishops that their policy is not in keeping with Catholic teaching and is doing harm to the common good.

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Pope stresses no compromise on life issues in address to Scottish bishops

The text of Pope Benedict's address to the Scottish bishops on their ad limina visit has just been released. Most notably, he said:

"A renewed focus on lay apostolate will help to clarify the roles of clergy and laity and so give strong impetus to the task of evangelizing society. That task requires a readiness to grapple firmly with the challenges presented by the increasing tide of secularism in your country. Support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life. Recent developments in medical ethics and some of the practices advocated in the field of embryology give cause for great concern. If the Church’s teaching is compromised, even slightly, in one such area, then it becomes hard to defend the fullness of Catholic doctrine in an integral manner. Pastors of the Church, therefore, must continually call the faithful to complete fidelity to the Church’s Magisterium, while at the same time upholding and defending the Church’s right to live freely in society according to her beliefs." [my emphasis]

Pope Benedict's strong words are similar to those he used when addressing the English and Welsh bishops, which I referred to on Tuesday. The Pope's warnings and directions about dissent from Church teaching on life and family issues will be greatly appreciated by countless ordinary Catholic and non-Catholic citizens in Britain. They are distressed by the undermining of Catholic pro-life and pro-family witness by influential clergy, laity, bodies and publications at home and abroad:

• the Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales' general support for the government's plans to force all state schools to teach sex education
• the Diversity and Equality Guidelines, issued in 2005 by the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, which I have called upon the bishops to repudiate
• the undermining of Humanae Vitae by Kieran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton, by The Tablet and by Cardinal Turkson of Ghana
• the demands by Tony Blair and in this weekend's Tablet that the Catholic Church changes its teaching on homosexuality*
• invitations by Catholic universities and charities to Cherie Blair, despite her open dissent from Catholic pro-life/pro-family teaching
• the approval by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the then-archbishop of Westminster, of an ethical code at St John and St Elizabeth’s Hospital, London, which failed to ban abortion referrals.

Instead of such co-operation with the culture of death, " ... what is urgently called for is a general mobilization of consciences and a united ethical effort to activate a great campaign in support of life ... ", as Pope John Paul II put it in Evangelium Vitae (95).

*In this connection, we must never forget the teaching of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 97. He said that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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Daily Telegraph gives good news on PVS patients a sinister twist

The headline of the top story on the front-page of today's Telegraph reads: "Patients in 'vegetative' state can think and communicate".  It's exciting stuff and well worth reading.

Readers of the Telegraph who remember the 1992 House of Lords judgment in the case of Tony Bland (pictured right with his mother) could be forgiven for thinking that the story would suggest that, perhaps, the judges got it wrong in the Bland judgement. No such luck I'm afraid. Indeed, in my view, the Telegraph gives this thoroughly "good news" story a sinister twist.

(For those who don't know about Tony Bland, he was seriously injured in the Hillsborough Stadium tragedy of 1989, leaving him in a persistent non-responsive state – often called a “persistent vegetative state” [PVS]. He could breathe by himself and assimilate foods and fluids administered by tube, yet following a High Court application by the Airedale Hospital trust, a decision was made to remove his feeding tube. That decision was upheld on appeal and by the House of Lords. Tony died nine days after the tube was removed. You can read more about him in a post of mine last September.)

Alison Davis of No Less Human has given me the following thoughts on today's story:

"It seems that the main preoccupation of the authors of this story on direct communication with supposed 'Persistent Vegetative State' (PVS) patients is that they may 'choose to die'.

"When one thinks about the many thoughts and ideas that people may want to express who have been silenced by their physical condition for five years or more, one would guess that the so-called 'right to die' would be low on their list of priorities. Nevertheless, Jacob Appel, an American 'medical ethics expert' appears to assume not only that they will have these thoughts, but that if they do, doctors will have an 'ethical obligation' to kill them.

"However, the greatest arrogance and presumption is reserved for the final sentence of the article, where it is claimed that it is 'doubtful' that the 'mercy killing' of Tony Bland in 1993 would be affected by the new technique since 'he was thought to be in an extreme form of PVS.'

"This assumes that the state of medical knowledge 17 years ago is unchanged today. It also makes the reader wonder whether the writers of this sentence had actually read their own story. The people with whom doctors communicated successfully using the new technique were equally sure that their patients were in 'PVS' - until they communicated with them. Who is to say that Tony Bland could not have had the same ability?

"However, that is not the most important point. Whether or not a person said to be in 'PVS' is rightly or wrongly diagnosed makes not a jot of difference to their right to life, however restricted, attended by the best care and technology available, until they die naturally."

Alison Davis, in a recently published paper, shows how euthanasia has spread, starting with the 1992 Bland judgment, and has expanded as a result of the 2005 Mental Capacity Act and is now implemented through the Liverpool Care Pathway.


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The celebrity-driven campaign for assisted suicide has revealing historical links

Dr John Sentamu, the Anglican archbishop of York, has spoken out about the celebrity-driven campaign for legalised assisted suicide.

His Grace certainly has a point: The Voluntary Euthanasia Society's campaign is backed by, among others, Sir Terry Pratchett and Martin Amis, the best-selling authors, Nick Ross, the former BBC Crimewatch presenter, and Zoe Wanamaker, the actress. And Debbie Purdy, whose court victory successfully undermined legal protection for the disabled, was effectively turned into a celebrity via media circuses. This was witnessed first-hand by Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager.

The manipulation of television and film by campaigners, celebrities and arts/media fellow-travellers to promote assisted suicide and euthanasia has a long-track record. Perhaps the first-ever such manipulation dates back to 1941, with Ich Klage An ("I accuse") (pictured), a propaganda film created designed to reduce resistance to the Nazi adult euthanasia programme. The film centres around a woman with multiple sclerosis (just like Debbie Purdy) who asks to be killed. Simon Konrad, the then-bishop of Passau, issued a pastoral letter against the film, warning:

"[D]o not let yourself be confused by the fascinating representation of cases, which are invented on purpose to make a specific point, namely in order to beguile both natural and Christian common sense by evoking human compassion in an especially clever way!"

Some euthanasia campaigners object to the assertion of any analogy between Nazism and their own campaign. They even try to invoke Godwin's law, a proposed rule for debate that attempts to bar any such analogy. However, Godwin's law doesn't apply here, because we are not talking about analogies but historical facts. Many of the aspects of the Nazi euthanasia campaign are the same ones proposed by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and its high-profile supporters:

• Hitler's 1939 order empowered physicians to grant a "mercy death" to "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." Doctor-assisted killing of the terminally-ill is the VES's stated basic aim.
• The Nazi adult euthanasia programme was operated by a review commissions, in which a tribunal of medical experts decided who qualified for death. Sir Terry Pratchett has this week proposed similar tribunals.
• When opposition by the Catholic Church put a halt to the adult euthanasia programme within Germany, the technology was sent to Eastern Europe for use in the Jewish extermination programme. This included mobile gas vans and then the infamous gas chambers. Last week, Martin Amis proposed the establishment of booths where people deemed to qualify would be killed.

Sir Terry Pratchett questions why people would be frightened of doctors following the legalisation of doctor-assisted suicide. He is probably unaware that when assisted suicide was legalised briefly in the Northern Territory, Australia, aborginals feared going to doctors or hospitals for fear of being killed. And perhaps Sir Terry has not yet read the words of Dr Christopher Hufeland, Goethe's doctor:

"The physician should and may do nothing else but preserve life. Whether it is valuable or not, that is none of his business. If he once permits such considerations to influence his actions, the doctor will become the most dangerous man in the state."

The campaign for assisted suicide is indeed truly frightening. The only security against the mass killing of the sick, disabled and elderly are laws which are based, not on eugenic ideas of which lives are worthy of continuance, but on the inestimable value of human life. And the sick, disabled and elderly depend for such laws on the pro-life movement, church leaders, and responsible politicians working closely together to maintain a solid wall of pro-life resistance to any weakening of laws which uphold the sanctity and inviolability of every human life.

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The bishops should repudiate their Diversity and Equality guidelines

Pope Benedict's address to the English and Welsh bishops has made headlines in the mainstream media, and sparked much comment and debate.

What I have yet to see is a reference to the bishops' 2005 Diversity and Equality guidelines. These guidelines no longer appear on the bishops' conference website, but are listed and replaced with a holding page informing visitors that new guidelines are being drafted to take account of recent legislative changes. The guidelines are a policy statement on British government and EU law on the equal employment rights of male and female homosexuals, and bisexuals and transsexuals.

The guidelines, whilst they contain elements of Catholic doctrine, welcome, seek to implement and state that the bishops' conference will monitor government policy within the Church, including in Catholic schools. Interestingly, the guidelines still appear on the website of the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales, which is giving general support to the government's proposals for sex education to be taught compulsorily in all state schools.

The bishops’ guidelines speaks about welcoming “the social and cultural changes which are required of us…”. It says “…it would be wrong to give some forms [of the six forms of discrimination listed by the Government] greater or lesser importance than others.” The guidelines say that Catholics “must understand and comply with discrimination legislation”.

The bishops’ guidelines calls on “those with authority at all levels of the church to be more aware of whether different groups are represented in the many facets of life of the Church e.g. schools…” and the bishops say: “…Organisations, institutions and diocese should consider appointing or entrusting someone with responsibility for diversity and equality”. Finally, the bishops warn: “We … intend to review progress … in two years”.

A pro-abortion document, prepared at the request of the EU Commission on the right to conscientious objection, links rights relating to sexual orientation to other supposed rights, including the “right” to abortion and the “right” to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The document quotes, in part, the bishops' Diversity and Equality Guidelines in a generally approving way. The bishops’ guidelines and the EU experts’ document clearly agree that, subject to limited and narrow exceptions, Catholic organisations must ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of sexual orientation.

With the bishops welcoming and guaranteeing the presence of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers in Catholic schools, is it not completely unrealistic to expect that Catholic sexual morality, including the sacredness of human life before birth, will be taught in these schools?

The reason why the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality is so important for the pro-life cause can be found in Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae. In paragraph 97, Pope John Paul teaches that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

Particularly in the light of Pope Benedict's address to them so widely reported today, the bishops must repudiate their 2005 Diversity and Equality guidelines.

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Former abortion facility director exposes abortionist's trade

Brad Mattes of Life Issues Institute in America has conducted an amazingly revealing interview with Abby Johnson, the former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood (PP) abortion facility. Here's some of the things Abby told Brad:

• Some of Abby's co-workers were angry when women decided not to go ahead with an abortion. This has led her to conclude that many people who call themselves pro-choice are in fact pro-abortion.
• There are not many people who work in abortion facilities who are in fact for choice. The people who work there have a sense of shame.
• Abby's boss started really hounding her about increasing abortion numbers at her facility. Her boss told her: "We've just got to get more women in here for abortions ... Abortion's got to be your priority, because that's where our money is." Abby described this as "sick", and PP's stated aim of helping women as "a farce". Abby said this conversation was the beginning of the end of her commitment to PP.
• PP don't really give women informed consent, and PP staff have no idea of when a baby has a heartbeat.
• Abby took the decision to leave PP after assisting in an ultrasound-guided surgical abortion. She was horrified by the reality of abortion, and eventually join pro-lifers who held vigils outside the abortion facility.

Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager, wrote in 2005 a dissertation on the subject of abortion facility staff. Anthony sent me his reaction to the interview:

"This extremely professional interview is a seminal moment in the campaign to dismantle the abortion industry. Abby's revelations relate to two of my own speculations about abortionists: 

• abortion inevitably results in what moral philosophers call instrumentalisation. People become instrumentalised when they are used for a lower, ignoble end. Abortion facility staff are being instrumentalised by Planned Parenthood, which is using their skills, not to serve the higher, noble end of medicine, but to serve the lower, ignoble end of easy profit-making. Planned Parenthood is also instrumentalising patients (both women and unborn children) by treating them, not as ends in themselves, but as cash-cows. 
• complicity even in such a horrific vice as serial killing of the innocent doesn't result in absolute and irrevocable corruption of an individual’s human nature. When Abby discovered the reality of abortion and the abortion industry, she rejected it swiftly and entirely."

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Powerful sex education lobby hates us, says a Manchester parish priest

Fr Connolly (pictured), the parish priest of St. Kentigern's, Fallowfield, in Manchester, has posted a powerful homily on his website which he intends to deliver at Sunday Masses this weekend.

He says that the crowd in Nazareth hated Christ and: " ... they rose up in a foul rage and bundled him out and tried to throw him down a cliff. In other words - they hated him - our Saviour."

Referring, amongst other matters, to the Government's intention of making abortion and birth control drugs and devices even more accessible to schoolchildren through all state schools, including Catholic schools, he says:

"His Church is being treated like that now by those who hate us ...

" ... It is like saying to the MPs that the National Front should be allowed membership of their party. Religious faith is of no consequence. Our children will be forcibly indoctrinated by the false ideology of those who rule us. They say it will bring down teenage pregnancies. We have the highest in Europe seemingly. The reality is that 30 years of this kind of stuff in our High schools has not proven successful."

Too true Father.

And sadly, as I have mentioned frequently before, the Catholic Education Service in England and Wales (CESEW) has betrayed Catholics and non-Catholics alike by its giving general support to the British government’s legislative proposals to require all state schools to teach sex and relationships education throughout the school years (from ages five to 18). (N.B. The state schooling system in England and Wales includes the majority of Catholic schools.) The British government has stated clearly that its proposals have been drafted to entrench a form of sex education which promotes access to abortion and contraception in all state schools, including in Catholic schools.

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Catholic bishops of England and Wales have been deceived says former headteacher

In an article in this weekend's Catholic Herald, Eric Hester challenges the Catholic Education Service to a public debate "to obtain from any Government Minister a statement that it is true that school governors can 'determine the content' of what is taught in sex education and can omit anything that they do not like."

Eric Hester was a headteacher of Catholic comprehensive and grammar schools for 24 years and has extensive experience of inspecting schools. He writes:

" ... I have been informed by one bishop that they were given assurances by the CES [Catholic Education Service] that governors would have complete control and that there would be no question of any teaching about civil partnerships or information given to pupils about how to obtain contraception and abortion without parental consent.

"It seems as if the bishops have relied entirely on the information of the CES and ignored other advice. They have been deceived ... "

Eric is right. I have frequently posted on the government's plans on sex education and on the Catholic Education Service's betrayal of Catholics and non-Catholics alike - which is why my wife and I will not be giving to the collection in Catholic churches tomorrow in their support. The government has, for example, accepted all the major recommendations of the 2007/2008 report by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG). The report's major recommendations include that:

"The Government's current review of SRE should ...

* ... [s]tate clearly that all schools including faith schools must teach all aspects of SRE within the context of relationships in an anti-discriminatory way; contraception, abortion and homosexuality are all legal in this country and therefore all children and young people should be able to learn the correct facts
* ... [m]ake explicit links to young people's advisory services and provision of contraception and sexual health services and demonstrate this by teaching young people how to access services".

Eric Hester's article continues:

" ... John Paul II put the rights of parents like this in his Charter of the Rights of the Family: 'Article 5 c. Parents have the right to ensure that their children are not compelled to attend classes which are not in agreement with their own moral and religious convictions. In particular, sex education is a basic right of parent and must always be carried out under their close supervision, whether at home or in educational centres chosen and controlled by them.'

"I publicly challenge the CES to obtain from any Government Minister a statement that it is true that school governors can "determine the content" of what is taught in sex education and can omit anything that they do not like. Everything the Government has said is to the contrary. Under the Freedom of Education Act I have obtained correspondence between the CES and the Government, where the CES asks for that very assurance and is not given it.

"So does the CES claim that it has been given private assurances that all will be well? That was exactly the argument used about gay adoptions, where the Government broke any promises given and which has resulted in the ending of Catholic adoption in England as we used to know it. I further challenge the CES to debate sex education with me, or a better speaker, on behalf of Catholic teaching at a public meeting."

I join Eric Hester in that challenge.

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My wife and I will not be donating to the Catholic Education Service this weekend

In many parts of England and Wales this weekend there will be a special collection for the Catholic Education Service (CESEW). (Pictured right are Ms Oonagh Stannard, the chief executive and director of the CESEW with Mr Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.) My wife and I will not be giving a donation - and this is why:

The CESEW welcomes into Catholic schools Connexions, a British government agency. Connexions’ staff are trained* to tell children that they have a right of access to abortion and contraception without parental knowledge or consent. SPUC has evidence of Connexions’ staff giving children such information in Catholic schools. In addition, the Connexions website includes pages promoting abortion and contraception to children.

(2) CESEW is giving general support to the British government’s legislative proposals to require all state schools to teach sex and relationships education throughout the school years (from ages five to 18). (N.B. The state schooling system in England and Wales includes the majority of Catholic schools.) The British government has stated clearly that its proposals have been drafted to entrench a form of sex education which promotes access to abortion and contraception in all state schools, including in Catholic schools.

CESEW has defended itself on these matters. CESEW’s defence, however:
• fails to present Catholic teaching on sex education
• is at variance with Catholic teaching on sex education
• provides no credible evidence for its claim that, under the government's proposals, Catholic schools will be able to uphold Catholic teaching on sexual ethics
• leaves pupils in non-Catholic schools (which are attended by many Catholics) at the mercy of the full force of government-specified pro-abortion sex education
• endorses the presence of on-site sexual health clinics at schools, including in Catholic schools.

*Connexions, “Young people and sexual health – A Reader for those participating in the Connexions’ training programme”, Crown Copyright 2003.


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Legal protection against assisted suicide must remain says RADAR

I am delighted to see that RADAR, (chaired by Baroness Campbell of Surbiton [pictured]) has responded to the Gilderdale case on which I blogged yesterday. On Monday Kay Gilderdale was acquitted of attempted murder after admitting to assisting her 31 year old daughter’s suicide. Lynn was diagnosed with chronic fatigue disorder at 14 and said that she decided she wanted to die after being ill for many years. RADAR is a charity ran by disabled people and the UK’s largest disability campaigning network.

Their press release can be found on their website, but I reproduce here in full:

Amidst the clamour for the laws on assisted suicide to be changed following the case of Lynn Gilderdale, RADAR wishes to state its commitment to the principle that those who have a hand in the death of another person, regardless of that person’s disability or the stated motivation of the perpetrator, should have to answer for their actions before a court of law.

This provides a vital safeguard for thousands of the most vulnerable people in our country, and creating a group of people for whom this safeguard does not exist is both dangerous and discriminatory.

This danger is further illustrated by the case of Tom Inglis. His mother Frances, in spite of medical opinion and acting on her own convictions that he was suffering and that it was what he would have wanted, decided to kill her brain-damaged son.

What if it was not what he wanted, at that time? What right did Frances Inglis have to make that decision for him? Tom’s disability does not give another person, even his mother, the right to take his life based on their own judgements. Tom has the same rights to legal protection and justice as anyone else, and the prospect of setting out circumstances in which people whose lives are deemed by others to be intolerable can be stripped of those rights is chilling beyond measure.

Commenting in the wake of the Gilderdale judgement Caroline Ellis, RADAR’s Joint Deputy Chief Executive whose teenage son has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), the same condition as Lynn Gilderdale, said:

“I condemn those who would try to use this case as ammunition for their fight to legalise assisted dying for people who are terminally ill or severely disabled or introduce a so-called ‘mercy killing’ defence. Singling out individuals for legalised killing based on their medical condition or prognosis would be discriminatory and repugnant – we must maintain current legal protections.”

“The real outrage is that people with CFS and their families are literally left to get on with it, with most not getting effective treatment or support. I am staggered at the lack of specialist resources available.”

“I have no way of knowing how severely CFS will affect my own child in the future but I know this: I never want him to feel like society is giving up on him, I want him and everyone else living with illness and impairment and their families to be supported to live [author’s emphasis], with access to the best possible care and support, free at the point of use. The idea that the law could be relaxed in future to encourage people to give up sends chills down my spine.”

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Civil partnerships have same value as marriage says David Cameron

According to the Daily Telegraph this morning, David Cameron (pictured), the leader of the Conservative party has said regarding sex education for schoolchildren:

“Should we teach them about civil partnerships being a way of same-sex couples showing commitment just as married couples show commitment? Yes we should.”

He apparently made it clear at a Cameron Direct meeting that this should be embedded "in the ethos of our education".

Last week I reported that Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, agrees with Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, that faith schools must teach that homosexuality is normal and harmless.

It appears, then, that the three major party leaders are in step with each other on this issue. All of this, of course, is in the context of the Government's Children, Schools and Families bill currently being considered by the Public Bill Committee in Parliament. This bill would make sex education compulsory in all state schools, including faith schools, from ages 5-16.

The first consequence of this rare agreement between party leaders is that concerned citizens must ensure that they don't vote along party political lines, but reflect on the voting intentions and voting record of individual parliamentary candidates.

It's important to remember, as the general election approaches, that David Cameron is on record as backing wider access to abortion and that all three party leaders voted in support of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, a law designed to kill countless human beings who are deliberately created never to be born.

The second consequence of the major party leaders' consensus on civil partnerships is that concerned citizens should make it clear that they refuse to allow their children to be taught in such a way at any stage in their education. As Catholics and pro-lifers, my wife and I have always taken this stand. We must never forget in this connection the teaching of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 97. He said that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

We must begin to organize more effectively to resist, peacefully and firmly, the State's attacks on the moral welfare of our children. In addition, Catholic parents and young people must also resist, peacefully and firmly, Catholic episcopal policy in England and Wales (on the government's sex education plans), which is contrary to Catholic teaching, undermines the culture of life, and betrays our children and unborn children by delivering them to the abortionists.


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Assisted suicide case shows pitfalls of pseudo-compassion

This morning SPUC issued a statement expressing concern at the outcome of the case of Lynn Gilderdale whose mother was acquitted of helping to kill her. ( Lynn was diagnosed with chronic fatigue disorder at 14 and said that she decided she wanted to die after being ill for many years.)

I commented:

"The jury's verdict and the judge's comments appear to have disturbing implications for vulnerable, disabled and seriously ill people. Laws against assisted suicide are actually there to protect such vulnerable people. We shall be studying this sad and worrying case carefully with a view to doing all in our power to step up our educational and political campaign on the need to explain and maintain the current legislation in this area.”

Mrs Kay Gilderdale was acquitted of the charge of attempted murder after admitting to assisting her 31 year old daughter’s suicide “by giving her sleeping pills, antidepressants and injecting air into her veins … after her daughter [Lynn] had injected herself with morphine”.

The media treatment of this story has been dominated by anti-life propaganda. For example, The Daily Telegraph, in nearly three pages of coverage sympathetic to Kay Gilderdale – pages one, two and three – devoted 30 words to presenting a pro-life perspective.

Media hero of the day is High Court Judge, Mr Justice Bean, who criticised the prosecution for pursuing the charge of attempted murder and who paid tribute to the jury’s “common sense, decency and humanity” for acquitting Kay Gilderdale of attempted murder of her daughter.

This case highlights the pitfalls of “pseudo-compassion”, the theme of a timely article entitled “The Pitfalls of Compassion” published this week by Monsignor Michael Schooyans, Professor Emeritus at the University of Louvain.

Monsignor Schooyans explains that compassion has traditionally been understood as an expression of human solidarity in suffering. To be compassionate has been thought to show understanding, to sympathize or to comfort. However, “in cases of abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide which appear in the news, compassion is frequently invoked to 'justify the act'". As killing somebody is not self-evidently compassionate, in the same way that comforting them is, compassionate intentions have to be presented as the justification for killing.

The Gilderdale case is an example of “compassion” being used as a justification for killing, rather than the expression of care towards another. Schooyans explains that coupled with judgments on the quality of life of human beings, this pseudo-compassion becomes the vehicle by which the most vulnerable in society are disposed of. Schooyans uses the example of an unborn child with disabilities to explain how people can be “ethically” exterminated. By claiming that the only way to help such children is by terminating their lives, society has created a moral principle whereby a child will be killed out of compassion. Likewise with Lynn Gilderdale the jury considered it justified for her mother to kill her on the “compassionate” grounds that it was the best way to relieve her daughter of her suffering.

Monsignor Schooyans explains that this brand of ethics goes on to impose its framework upon society. In the case of abortion it is claimed that it is contrary to compassion to impose the “insupportable ‘burden’” of pregnancy upon women. The act of abortion then is justified by its ‘compassion’ toward both mother and child and those who object to such an action thereby become opponents of “compassion”.

Schooyans explains, compassion has been further “manipulated” as a tool of congratulation. This is seen in the demand by society to sympathise with and applaud those doctors who

“‘for the good’ of the child or its mother take the ‘courageous’ decision to go ahead with an abortion”.

Such congratulation for what Schooyans dubs as “bogus compassion” has terrifying consequences. Schooyans cites the 1962 case in Belgium where a woman who murdered her child who had been born with “serious malformations” due to her having taken thalidomide, was acquitted by the Belgian court to “hearty applause from the public.”

The same “bogus compassion” is at operation and imposes its framework in the Gilderdale case. A false understanding of the notion of compassion has led a mother to kill her daughter, believing that it was the compassionate thing to do. This "compassion" has been manipulated by the judge as a tool of congratulation in his remarks to the jury - with the clear implication that those who might oppose the jury's decision are the opponents of compassion.

We must stand firm for true compassion. Last week Margo MacDonald launched her End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament. Alison Davis of No Less Human, a division of SPUC, who lives with severe spina bifida and other debilitating conditions that have brought her to the brink of suicide in the past, told the Scottish media:

"Sometimes what desperate people, disabled or not, need is to be given hope. What they definitely don't need is to be told they are right to feel so unhappy and that they would be better off dead. This is simply the moral equivalent of the practical example of seeing a person about to jump off a high bridge and giving them a push."

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Faith schools must teach homosexuality* is normal and harmless, Telegraph reports

I hope the interview with Ed Balls (pictured), the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, in yesterday's Telegraph, will persuade Catholic church leaders in England and Wales that they are wrong about British government policy on sex and relationships education policy.

The Telegraph interview says:

" ... Does he agree with Nick Clegg that faith schools should be forced to teach that homosexuality is normal and harmless? The answer is yes. 'If their faith has a view in scripture, they can inform pupils of that. What they must not do is teach discrimination. They must be absolutely clear about the importance of civil partnerships [and that] bullying of homosexuals is wrong ... '".

Now Archbishop Nichols reportedly says that British government policy means that Catholic schools have "retained their rights through the governing body that their sex and relationships education is delivered according to Catholic ethos and teaching".

So does that mean, in the light of Ed Balls's reported statement above, that Catholic schools can teach paragraphs 2357 - 2359 of Catechism the Catholic Church?  These state:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

And when teaching children about "the importance of civil partnerships", is it the British Government's policy that Catholic church schools can do so in accordance with Catholic teaching on the subject which has been so well explained by Fr Boyle in his blog, Caritas in Veritate?

I am afraid it does not mean that. As I have mentioned before the government has accepted all the major recommendations of the 2007/2008 report by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG). The report's major recommendations include that:

"The Government's current review of SRE should ...

• ... [s]tate clearly that all schools including faith schools must teach all aspects of SRE within the context of relationships in an anti-discriminatory way; contraception, abortion and homosexuality are all legal in this country and therefore all children and young people should be able to learn the correct facts
• ... [m]ake explicit links to young people's advisory services and provision of contraception and sexual health services and demonstrate this by teaching young people how to access services"

How tragic that the TPIAG says in its latest report that:

"TPIAG commends the Government for its decision to make PSHE education, including SRE, statutory at all key stages .... We are very pleased that Church of England and Catholic Church are also supporting this move." [my emphasis]

Please pray that church leaders in England and Wales reverse their position.  As I said yesterday, they risk throwing our children to the wolves.  A tragic error was made by Catholic church leaders and other Christian leaders in the 1960s in failing to organize a great campaign amongst Christians to oppose the passage of the Abortion Act 1967 which has now cost over 7 million unborn lives and the welfare of countless mothers.  There's a risk of a worse error being made  by the Catholic church and Anglican authorities this year - in  effectively seeking to undermine the pro-life campaign on the Children Schools and Families bill by giving general support to Government policy on sex and relationships education.  This policy is clearly designed, as the TPIAG makes clear above, to promote access to secret abortions through the state school system, including faith schools.

*In Evangelium Vitae paragraph 97, Pope John Paul II taught that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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Our families risk being thrown to the wolves

During recent weeks there have been a number of reports of Catholic bishops standing up for life and family in different countries:

• Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver, Canada, has told his flock that abortion is a "slaughter of the innocents", and said that pro-lifers“have an irreplaceable role to play: we need – the Church needs, society needs – evangelists, heralds, of life, people willing to confront the weakness of a culture which has trivialized the gift of life.”
• The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has written all 19,000 parishes in America, urging the faithful to take immediate action to stop Congress voting to include abortion in health care reform. The US bishops have also praised the courage of those politicians who defended the traditional definition of marriage in the New Jersey Senate in a recent vote. On behalf of the US bishops, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz said: “Preserving marriage between one man and one woman is...one of the premier social justice issues of our time."
• Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City has responded to critics of the Church's opposition to same-sex unions saying: "[W]e cannot be silent ... Mexico is a country that loves the family, which is its basic cell and the center of social cohesion. For this reason we are very concerned about the attacks on marriage". 
• The Mexican bishops' conference has pledged its support for Cardinal Rivera's stand, saying about adoption of children by same-sex couples: “The family institution is responsible for procreation and for ensuring children have the guidance of a father and a mother for their education and development as persons". 
• Last month Pope Benedict XVI sent a message of support to pro-life/pro-family groups in Spain battling their government’s attempts to usher in abortion on demand. He made his address on the same day as a host of Church leaders joined a massive rally in Madrid which I blogged about. Pope Benedict said: "[O]ne of the greatest services which we as Christians can offer our fellow men and women is to show them the serene and solid witness of a family founded upon marriage between a man and a woman, defending it and protecting it, because it is of supreme importance for the present and future of humankind." He reiterated that the family unit, and therefore parents, should be a child’s primary educators: "In truth, the family is the best school in which to learn to live the values that dignify individuals and make peoples great."

This respect for the role of parents as the first and foremost educators of their children will be trampled on by the government’s Children, Schools and Families bill, currently being considered by committee in the House of Commons.

Last November the government told parliament that it had accepted all the major recommendations of the fifth annual report by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG). Among the TPIAG's major recommendations are that the Government's current review of SRE should:

· [s]tate clearly that all schools including faith schools must teach all aspects of SRE within the context of relationships in an anti-discriminatory way; contraception, abortion and homosexuality* are all legal in this country and therefore all children and young people should be able to learn the correct facts
· [m]ake explicit links to young people's advisory services and provision of contraception and sexual health services and demonstrate this by teaching young people how to access services"

In the light of the bold statements on the part of so many church leaders in other parts of the world, including the Pope, it is all the more disappointing that both the Catholic and Anglican authorities in England and Wales are in general supporting the government's proposals to force all state schools to teach sex education throughout the school years (from ages five to 18).

In addition, the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales (CESEW) continues to welcome into Catholic schools Connexions, a British government agency. Connexions’ staff are trained to tell children that they have a right of access to abortion and contraception without parental knowledge or consent, a training manual which I am happy to send to anyone who requests it.

Christian families and non-Christian families, in England and Wales have the right and the duty to demand better protection from their pastors for their families and their unborn children and grandchildren. Christian leaders need to take a leaf out of overseas' prelates books. Currently, our families risk being being thrown to the wolves.

*In Evangelium Vitae paragraph 97, Pope John Paul II taught that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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Euthanasia bill a threat to people with illness and disability

Margo MacDonald, a member of the Scottish parliament (MSP), launched a bill this morning which would allow euthanasia.

SPUC Scotland is urging MSPs to oppose the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill because it attacks the first human right - the right to life - and is a threat to all people with illness or disability.

It's a sad day for the Scottish Parliament that one of its leading politicians, Ms Margo MacDonald, is proposing such a dangerous bill.

SPUC Scotland told the media this morning:

"Among its dangerous proposals is that helping kill someone who is ill or incapacitated will enable ‘dignity in dying’ and that only a procured death is dignified. This is wholly wrong and is a terrible message to impart to our society.

"What hasn’t changed with the bill, however, is that once again it’s the terminally ill and the severely disabled or ‘physically incapacitated’ who are being targeted as qualifying for having their lives deemed ‘not worth living’ or being ‘right to want to die.’

"Not only are the measures in the bill against international human rights legislation but they do not restrict the 'assistance' to doctors. They call for friends and relatives to be permitted to assist, no doubt because most medics oppose assisting suicide.

"Nor are the suggested safeguards any protection for vulnerable in Scotland. We see in those countries where it is legal, such as Holland, that non-voluntary euthanasia always follows. The threat is loud and clear to the ill and disabled: you are the target."

Alison Davis of No Less Human, a division of SPUC, who lives with severe spina bifida and other debilitating conditions that have brought her to the brink of suicide in the past, also told the media:

"The Dutch experience showed that, once euthanasia or assisted suicide is allowed, despite any number of so-called ‘strict safeguards’ such as that the killing must be ‘voluntary’, it is likely to go on to include victims who either did not, or could not, volunteer.

“I know from my own experience that what is needed is not to be abandoned or presumed to be ‘better off dead’ or to have one’s fears of being ‘burdensome’ confirmed, but rather to be surrounded by those who care. Friends and family may not be able to take the pain away, but their presence can be a source of enormous comfort.

"Sometimes what desperate people, disabled or not, need is to be given hope. What they definitely don't need is to be told they are right to feel so unhappy and that they would be better off dead. This is simply the moral equivalent of the practical example of seeing a person about to jump off a high bridge and giving them a push."

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Legal academic pens hard-hitting rejection of assisted suicide guidance

Dr Jacqueline Laing (pictured), a legal academic, has written a hard-hitting article in the Solicitors Journal against the director of public prosecutions (DPP)'s guidance on assisted suicide. Among other things, Dr Laing says in her article:

• "[T]he guidance is unconstitutional, arbitrary and at odds with human rights law"
• "[A]n alteration in the substance of the law is precisely what is envisaged by the guidance"
• "Of the factors outlined against prosecution, many – for example, that the victim had a severe and incurable physical disability – are observably at odds with the demands of non-discrimination (articles 2 and 14 [of the Human Rights Act]) and the equal dignity principle."
• "The inclusion of the factor that the suspect had previously attempted suicide also prompts the suspicion that the most vulnerable and depressed are being discriminated against."
• "Nowhere else in the criminal law does the motive of ‘compassion’ as distinct from involuntariness, a defence which affects human control, operate to exculpate"
• "[E]uthanasia, whether de jure or de facto, erodes respect for the value of human life, undermines the goals of medicine, endangers the vulnerable and imperils those who may indeed be a burden to others"
• "Once this unconstitutional and illegal guidance becomes normalised, financial, scientific and medical interests will incentivise what can only be described as homicidal practice."

It is interesting to note that the criteria in the DPP's guidance is the same as the criteria in the bill proposed by Margo Macdonald before the Scottish parliament. I'm reliably informed that Mrs Macdonald will be launching her bill this morning at a press conference.

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Jury in Inglis murder trial showed great courage

A jury at the Old Bailey (London's central criminal court) today convicted Frances Inglis of murdering her son Thomas. Mr Inglis claimed she killed her 22-year-old son to end his suffering after he sustained severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance.

Paul Tully, SPUC Pro-Life's general secretary, has told the media this afternoon:

“There are no reports that Thomas ever expressed any wish to die. Like Tony Bland, who survived the Hillsborough football stadium tragedy but was later killed by his doctors, Thomas Inglis’ killing was non-voluntary euthanasia.

“Frances Inglis called her son’s life a ‘living hell,’ and claimed he was in ‘constant pain’. These are phrases that we often hear about disabled people, when others want to impose a ‘right to die’ on them. This reflects the fact that voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia are two sides of the same coin. In either case, the key fact is that the person doing the killing regards the victim as better off dead. This is unacceptable.

“It is most regrettable that Miranda Moore QC, the prosecution's lawyer, seems to have accepted, without evidence, that when people like Thomas Inglis were killed it ‘put them out of their misery’. Nevertheless, she secured a conviction, which is some recompense for those who, like Thomas, are unable to communicate their feelings freely.

“Some media reports have evoked great sympathy for Mrs Inglis, but in highlighting her conflicted feelings, they are masking other important facts.

“The jury has shown great courage in bringing a verdict according to the evidence."

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