Monday Oct 16th
This Government gets worse and worse. It's unclear whether or not they will impose punishments on people who infringe new regulations on discrimination against sexual oreintation": Jamie spends much of this morning answering queries from the Catholic press on the subject. Can we can any hope that a Christian hostel or conference centre will not be punished if it refuses a shared bed to two lesbians who specifically demand one? What will happen in Catholic schools if there is a legal requirement to teach the full acceptability of homosexual activity?
There seems to be some hope that full legislation on this may be postponed, but the signs are not good. Meanwhile, our Bishops, who thought they had reached some understanding with the Govt on the question of Catholi schools, seem to have been double-crossed. It does seem that any new "faith school" (ie a Catholic or C of E school) will have to allocate a quarter of places to non-church applicants, if neccessary turning away practising Church members. And the matter of giving full legal force to all over-16 year olds to boycott any religious worship in school looks set to be part of the new law....
Email from an American correspondent who - like many across the pond - seems to think that Blair is a man of integrity who "may become a Catholic". For goodness' sake, let's get this right. Of course Blair will officially join the Catholic Church once he ceases to be Prime Minister - he knows perfectly well that it is the only Church with any power. There's no status or useful platform in Anglicanism. As a pro-abortion Catholic (he has a 100 per cent pro-abortion voting record) and a campaigner for the whole "homosexual-rights" agenda (he was chief guest at their debauched show at the Royal Albert Hall to raise cash for a militant gay-rights initiative), he will have massive scope for his new career, while Cherie will amost certainly have a role as some sort of roving ambassador for a revamped "Catholics for a Free Choice" type of organisation. Her big fund-raiser at 10 Downing Street in aid of Planned Parenthood a while back was a success: it ensured a great start tyo the scheme to distribute coloured and fruit-flavoured condoms (I'm not inventing this) to teenagers under the slogan "Lust for Life."
Blair has played a major political role in ensuring the collapse of morals in our country. He has led us into an appalling war which will result in the destruction of one of the few countries in the Middle East where there were reasonably strong Christian communities, which may well now disappear. Our Armed Forces are under extreme pressure, our crime rate soars, and Government policies openly promote schemes to smash traditional marriage and family life. Yet deluded Americans still talk about "Tony Blair, man of integrity".....please, please look at what is actually happening, and don't have an image of Britain that is based on 1950s films!
14 comments:
My question about the sexual orientation regulations is this.
As mere regulations, will they not be struck down out of hand for being repugnant to an Act of Parliament, namely the Human Rights Act?
As for the war in Iraq, my problem is that we're trying to fight the Third World War with a peacetime economy. If we went to so much as partial mobilisation of the economy we could find jobs very quickly for the approximately 1.7 million unemployed and economically inactive.
Americans don't get the full story when it comes to Tony Blair. All we really hear about him from our national media is his stalwart support for the United States at a time when anti-American sentiment is rampant worldwide. This, obviously, colors our perspective, and disposes us to consider him favorably.
What our national media does NOT report is the absolutely disastrous effects of Blair's domestic agenda upon the moral fabric of Great Britain.
Thank you for offering some much-needed perspective to your American cousins.
I had NO idea about all this...certainly not how the American Press covers the Blairs so why am I surprised? But also not how Catholic Press covered Mrs. Blair...esp when she visited the Pope. I guess since they're intent on re-creating the experience of the Anglican church in the Catholic church. Fortunately, it will fail because the gates of Hell won't prevail against the Rock (per Jesus).
Exactly. I have never been much of a fan of the Blair Switch Project. Unless of course he truly converts from his pro-abortion views. The problem of course is that there are too many priests that are willing to bring someone into the Church who in public dissents on major parts of the faith.
One of my favorite stories about the conversion of Dietrich von Hildebrand was that he told his priest who he was getting instructions from that he was ready to join the Church, though that it thought her teaching on contraception was misguided. The priest told him that he would not bring him into the Church unless he held to all the teachings. He then made an act of faith saying that he did believe in the authority of the Church to teach this and that he would accept it. Of course later he became a great teacher on the sin of contraception.
Well Joanna, looks like you won't be getting anything in the next New Year's Honours list!!
See - This why your blog is so important - I snipped the last paragraph and linked to your entire post for my blog in the U.S.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your very informative and interesting posts; I've been enjoying your blog.
As an American, I appreciated the corrective coverage of doings at 10 Downing.
Another point of view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1922983,00.html
The cabinet is in open warfare over new gay rights legislation after Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, who is a devout Catholic, blocked the plans following protests from religious organisations.
Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, was so angry with the move that he wrote a letter to Kelly three weeks ago, telling her that the new rights should not be watered down.
The battle between what is being dubbed the government's 'Catholic tendency' and their more liberal colleagues centres on proposals to stop schools, companies and other agencies refusing services to people purely because of their sexuality.
Tony Blair, who sent three of his children to Catholic schools, is said to be anxious about the impact on faith schools and faith-based adoption agencies, which are demanding to be exempt from the law.
Kelly has now delayed the introduction of the laws for consideration of what a spokesman said were 'difficult issues'. Johnson is leading the opposition to watering down the laws. 'His department has in the past taken the faith schools' line but Johnson is saying they have got to be sensible about this,' said a senior Whitehall source. 'You can' t have Satan worshippers going into the local church to have their annual meeting, but if there's a publicly funded school and it wants to open its facilities to everyone else but not a local gay and lesbian group - that's discrimination.'
The proposed measures would ban discrimination over the provision of goods and services, meaning, for example, that hotels which banned gay couples from sharing a room could be prosecuted. In turn, gay bars would also have to be open to straight clients. More broadly, the rules potentially affect everything from fertility clinics' right to refuse lesbian couples IVF treatment to whether the tourism industry can promote heterosexuals-only honeymoon resorts, drawing several Whitehall departments into the row.
Faith schools have, however, led the protest, arguing that the rules could affect teaching about sex or require them to let gay groups hold meetings on their premises after hours. Catholic adoption agencies fear being forced to allow gay couples to adopt children. The Catholic church, which regards homosexuality as a sin, has suggested adoption agencies would close down rather than obey.Johnson, who originally agreed the proposals when he was Trade and Industry Secretary before a Whitehall reorganisation transferred the issue into Kelly's department, is understood to be dismayed that they are now in jeopardy.
The issue has also tested David Cameron's progressive credentials, with senior Conservatives still locked in debate about their response.
Thank you, Joanna, for highlighting the reality of the Blairs. It's high time that the true message about them is known to our friends across the pond - he is anything but a saint.
As I've said on Fr Ray Blake's blog, shame on any priest who receives Blair into the Church knowing his public record on moral teachings. And shame, too, on our bishops, who do nothing to criticise this dreadful man and his pro-abortion/contraception policies - unless it's the tokenism they occasionally display when some aspects of so-called Catholic education are concerned. Any faithful Catholic who has had the misfortune to have their children go through the Catholic system in the UK, will know that there is no real Catholic education in this country. At my son's 'Catholic' school, when he was in year 10, the mixed class had a lesson in contraception, including how to properly wear condoms and how to fit the coil and other contraceptive devices. Abortion, too, was mentioned, but they were told that the Catholic Church doesn't believe in it. The headteacher and (priest) director of the Diocesan Schools Commission were wholly unsupportive of our parental concerns.
Let us pray that it won't be too long before we start to get Catholic bishops in this country and we can return to a good, sound network of Catholic education. Meanhwile, we must also pray that the current proposals on admittance to 'faith schools' are not implemented.
I had no idea that they were "Kerry Catholics"...
& that the gov't. could impose regulations on Catholic organizations-
thank you for the education.
Maybe it's time to simply found new independent schools and encourage parishoners to subsidise the fees for children. There has to be some filthy rich Catholic nobility somewhere who can be begged to help education.
The one time I saw Blair was going in to the 5;30 mass at Westminster Cathedral. Does his interest in Catholicism reflect the fact that much of the Church leadership, at least in London, actually shares his outlook? Is anyone in the English church starting to get concerned about this communality of outlook, and the 40% decline in the observant Catholic population the outlook has produced since 1990?
It's worse than you think, Joanna. Last night, Lord Baker withdrew his amendment requiring new faith schools to offer 25% of places to non-practitioners of that faith, on the assurance of Lord Adonis that the government would table its own. Lord A assured their Lordships that this would not be the end of the wedge, but before bedtime, Alan Johnson was publicly musing about applying the 25% rule to [i]all[/i] faith schools.
Where is the justice in faithful, practicing members of whatever faith community being denied places in the schools of that faith, simply in order to satisfy the requirements of the government's latest social engineering project? I thought this was a free country.
sounds like blair is taking cues from american "catholic" politicians.
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