Politics
Monday September 8, 2008
Anti-Catholic Gay Lobby Group Met at UK Catholic College with Support of Archdiocese
Catholic Archdiocese claims it was helpless to prevent meeting
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
By Hilary White
September 8, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic diocese of Southwark told a lay Catholic organisation that it was helpless to stop a pro-homosexual group from holding their annual meeting in a local Catholic college this summer. Quest, a group formed to oppose Catholic teaching on homosexuality and chastity, held its meeting this July at Digby Stuart College, a Catholic college at Roehampton University.
Speakers at the Quest conference included Fr. Michael Seed, the Franciscan "priest to the stars", and ecumenical officer at the archdiocese of Westminster, who had the responsibility of instructing former Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Catholic faith before the latter's reception last December into the Church.
Quest, founded in 1973 by former Dominican friar Mark Dowd, claims its purpose is to "proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ so as to sustain and increase Christian belief among homosexual men and women." The group's true agenda, however, which it takes pains to conceal on its website, is to push the Catholic Church to abandon its teaching on sexuality and marriage.
The National Association of Catholic Families has identified Quest as "an organization, dedicated to denying the teaching of the Church." In 1998, Quest was removed from the Catholic Directory on the instructions of the late Basil Cardinal Hume, then archbishop of Westminster. Last year a Quest event at the Liverpool University Catholic Chaplaincy was cancelled at the insistence of Archbishop Patrick Kelly, after Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice intervened.
Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice said in its most recent newsletter that Quest is "a militant homosexual group." Starting in January this year, Pro Ecclesia began writing to Kevin McDonald, the archbishop of Southwark, asking him to "protect his students" from Quest, but they received no answer.
After a second letter went unanswered, a third, copied to the Vatican, received the response from archdiocesan officials which said that since the archdiocese did not own Digby Stuart College, nothing could be done to stop the event. Daphne McLeod, however, told LifeSiteNews.com that the archdiocese was proactively supporting the event by providing a chaplain, Fr. Alan McLean.
The Quest website refuses to reveal much of the group's aims and positions on Catholic teaching and only edited versions of their newsletter are available to the general public. The public is also excluded from the discussion forum and its officers are listed only by their first names. But the campaign organisation Catholic Action UK points out that first on the Quest list of objectives is to aid "lay men and women who are seeking ways of reconciling the full practice of their Catholic faith with the full expression of their homosexual natures in loving Christian relationships."
A survey conducted of Quest membership in 2000 found that 89 percent of members said "no" when asked, "Are you convinced by any arguments that you have heard to the effect that sex outside marriage is always wrong?" When asked "Should Quest work for change in official Church teaching on sexuality?" 90 percent said "yes." Asked, "Should it be part of the purpose of Quest to encourage its members to live chaste lives with no sexual activity?" 81 percent of the membership said "no."
When archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham made a stand against the government's Sexual Orientation Regulations, Quest sent a letter to its members complaining that Nichols "believes he can bully the government into submission by threatening to withdraw the Church's co-operation in a whole manner of areas if it does not climb down." The group also made a submission to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales attacking their position against homosexual civil partnerships.
Daphne McLeod told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that "Quest are aiming specially at young Catholics. These are vulnerable because they're ignorant. They're not being taught the faith, and neither are their parents. Parents send their children to university and encourage them to become involved in the Catholic chaplaincy there."
"They should be protected, but the bishops won't do it."
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Liverpool Catholic Church Praised for Refusing to Allow Pro-homosexual Group to Use Church Premises
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071102.html
To contact Archbishop Kevin MacDonald
Archbishop's House
150 St George's Road
London
SE1 6HX
Private Secretary to the Archbishop
020 7928 0687
Monsignor William Saunders
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase Out Lab Rats
- Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.