By Hilary White
LONDON, April 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Tony Blair’s Labour party has been waging an intolerant ideological war against religious belief in the name of tolerance, according to the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor.
Delivering the 30th Thomas Corbishley Memorial lecture at Westminster Cathedral Hall on March 28, the Cardinal, leader of England and Wales’ 4 million Catholics, wondered aloud “whether the threads holding together democracy have begun to unravel.”
He denounced the passage of the Sexual Orientation Regulations of the Equality Act that, religious leaders have said, will coerce public compliance with homosexual ideology by faith-based services including schools and adoption agencies.
The Cardinal said that religious freedom is more than the freedom to worship: “It is the freedom to serve the common good according to the convictions of our faith,” he said. “It seems to me we are being asked to accept a different version of our democracy, one in which diversity and equality are held to be at odds with religion.”
Describing the passage of the SOR’s as an historic turning point, the Cardinal said, “I am conscious that when an essential core of our democratic freedom risks being undermined, subsequent generations will hold to account those who were able to raise their voices yet stayed silent.”
He added, “What looks like liberality is in reality a radical exclusion of religion from the public sphere.” Since the destruction in the 16th century of Catholic social agencies by King Henry VIII, Britain has periodically discriminated against Catholics and full civil rights were not granted to English Catholics until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.
While debates were raging earlier this year in the media and Parliament over the imposition of the SOR’s on religious groups, many warned that the claim the Regulations would merely prohibit unjust discrimination were a smoke screen for an all-out assault by secularists on public expressions of religious faith.
In January, the Cardinal sent a letter to MP’s saying that the imposition of homosexual ideology on Catholic charitable services, particularly adoption agencies, may result in the closure of those services.
“My fear is that in an attempt to clear the public square of what are seen as unacceptable intrusions, we weaken the pillars on which that public square is erected, and we will discover that the pillars of pluralism may not survive.”
Other legislation mandating changes to the charities law will require churches to prove their services are of “public benefit,” a tactic popular with 19th century French anti-clericals and secularists. The charities are being overseen by one of Britain’s most prominent secularists, Dame Suzi Leather, who has said that the “advancement of religion” may no longer be considered sufficient qualification for charitable tax exempt status.
The Cardinal may have been anticipating this next stage in the assault on religious bodies in Britain when he said, “I wonder how far we can still claim as British the assumption that if a religious organisation serves the public interest according to its own rights, it has a legitimate claim on public resources.”
“I begin to wonder whether Britain will continue to be a place which protects and welcomes the works of people shaped and inspired by the church,” the Cardinal said.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UK: Religious Schools May Not Teach Christian Sexual Morals “As if They Were Objectively True”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07030504.html
UK Demonstration Against Sexual Orientation Legislation, and an Angry Response from an MPs Office
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07032709.html