The Roman Catholic ban on women entering the priesthood will become illegal under Harriet Harman’s controversial Equality Bill, according to Christian charity, CARE.
NuLabour, need to stop legislating and reverse the process, NOW:-
A new report by the leading charity – backed by a legal opinion from a leading QC – says the Bill will make it impossible for all churches and faith-based charities to insist that their senior staff lead private lives in accordance with their religious beliefs.
CARE said that, under the Bill, which will be considered by the House of Lords on Monday, it would be illegal for a Christian charity to sack a senior manager for adultery or living an openly gay lifestyle.
The same rules would, it added, apply to Muslim and Jewish churches and charities.
However, the biggest potential showdown is likely to be between the government and Britain’s 4.3 million Catholics over the church’s tradition of an all-male, celibate priesthood.
Previous legislation in 2007, also backed by Ms Harman, the Commons Leader and equality minister, forced the closure of two Catholic adoption agencies for refusing to comply with new laws requiring them to place children with gay couples.
CARE’s report – A Little Bit Against Discrimination? – warns that the proposals contained in the Bill are a serious threat to religious liberty in Britain.
John Bowers QC said in a legal opinion for CARE that the Bill could make it unlawful for a church to require a priest or minister to be male, celibate and unmarried, or not in a civil partnership.
Tags: Christianity, Law Moral Ethical, Politics
January 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
How very, very sad! Inch by inch we are being enslaved by a dictatorial secular state. We have ceased to be in the terms of the Book Of Common Prayer: ‘The church militant here on earth’. We have ceased to contend faithfully for that Faith once delivered to the saints! We have a form of godliness now which denies the power thereof. We have become so accomodating that little, if anything, distinguishes us from the world we are expected to convert.
Seperation, self denial, and contending faithfully for the gospel are factors foreign to so many who gather for introverted clap happy sessions, sometimes almost akin to coverns euphoric on drugs. Yes, while our theology has become so liberal that it appears pointless to send out missionaries to convert – dare I say it? – the heathen!
The wonderful old slogan of Cliff College Methodist foundation was ‘Evangelise Or Perish’. We’ve just about ceased to evangelise – we are uncertain of the message! – so now we are perishing and making way for – dare I say it again? – the heathen to proselatise in our midst. Jesus is supposedly, it would seem, not the only way, the truth or the life; but just an alternative of so many more.
And so the Christian ethics and family setting of bringing up Children in the fear and nurture of the Lord appears unecessary. Partners take the place of spouses. Offspring are beginning to be brought up ‘battery style’ in impersonal pre school nurseries at tax payers expense because mum and dad – often increasuingly out of necessity – must be at work. Yes, mums are being changed in to baby breeders and dads – whoever they are as they come and go – are little more than studs. Then we wonder why children are growing up as delinquents. It would be a miracle if they were not!
I’d hate to run a Christian book shop or hotel – or any similar establishment these days! I’d have to employ by law an element of homos, lesies, Bies, or Transes; othertwise my establishment could be closed down and myself no doubt highly fined or imprisoned. Yes, all this kind of chaos and slaverish dicatorialism, because in So Called democracy, minorities must have – at the least – equal rights.
Ah well, one thing is sure: once persecution against the Christians comes fully in to force, the wheat will be separated from the chaff. ‘The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the early church’. Well I don’t expect much of a harvest from today’s brand of Christians in the UK. Sorry if I’m a Jeremiah, but all this needs to be said
January 10th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
PS: I forgot to add in my previous letter that the rightful place for women in church and home life is clearly elucidated in the writings of the Apostle Paul. As for the apostles, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that they were married, and that their eldest colleague certainly had a mother in law. Ofcourse, we do not have to abide by the New Testament practices. We can have women who could also be practising Lesbians as top prelates of the Anglican church. Indeed, the present Anglican archbishop of Wales actually sees no harm in this! Neither would a Gene Robinson!
We could equally substitute tea and biscuits for Holy Communion, or a rolick in the isle – such as swinging partners of the opposite sex, in the isle – in place of a dignified ‘kiss’ of peace during the Eucharist. One could go on here! But the fact is that the greatest vocation of most Christian ladies is to be found in the example of the blessed Mother of Our Lord. And though they did not always see eyer to eye. At the last, when all His disciples but one forsook Him, there stood by the cross of Jesus Mary His mother.
True motherhood seems to be a dying vocation these days; yet behind most great men there has been the influence of a sacrificial mother with her priorities in true perspective. Yes, and for other women – surely more worthy of ordination than most others! = are those who’ve given their whole lives as sisters within their respective religious orders.
Let it be made clear that both within the church and outside of it, the sexes are not created by God to be identical: they are biologically different and complementary to each other and need to be fully respected as such
January 10th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Disclaimer: I’m not a Roman Catholic, and I personally don’t believe in an all-celibate priesthood.
But regardless of my personal feelings about how the church ought to be run, it is a problem for the Church, and not the Government, to deal with. The secular government has no business telling the Church who it may or may not allow to be in spiritual leadership, and for what reason. And I would be proud to be part of the same faith of any Christian congregation that is willing to respectfully disobey such laws, recognising only who fulfil the demands of the faith as they best understand it, and patiently enduring whatever retaliation the state may inflict.
And let it be known to all that regardless of all attacks past, present, and future, the Church of Jesus Christ will continue to follow their Savior and God, and will never be destroyed by any government anywhere.