By Hilary White
CASHEL, Ireland, June 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Church of Ireland (Anglican) bishop has issued a statement welcoming legislation on civil unions that would allow homosexual partners to be registered, and calling for Irish society to “come of age” on the issue of abortion.
The Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, Michael Burrows, wrote in the diocesan newsletter, “Civil partnership legislation is certainly not perfect but it deserves to be welcomed and to be given time.”
Burrows said that Ireland is to “embark upon something of a new social order” with the proposed law. “I dare to hope that those who choose civil partnership will find it gives them some deep sense of peace and acceptance,” he said.
Without openly calling for the legalization of abortion, Burrows noted that 18 years have passed since the “X case,” in which a 14-year-old girl, pregnant by rape, was initially prevented by the attorney general from leaving Ireland to abort her child in Britain. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that a woman can have an abortion if she is threatening suicide.
He wrote, “Eighteen years is a long time; it is the time it takes individual humans to ‘come of age’. As a society, however, we have failed dismally to come of age in relation to matters at the heart of the X case.”
“We still remain hypocritical and incapable of engaging with the truth about ourselves at a legislative level – despite successive referendums on these matters, tragic individual human stories are dragged all the way to the Supreme Court in the absence of legislation,” he said.
He continued, “I have a high view of politics and parliament, yet elsewhere I have had occasion to condemn what I term the ‘systematic spinelessness’ of the Legislature when it comes to a range of ethical issues surrounding the beginning of human life.”
A recent poll showed that Ireland’s constitutional protection for the life of unborn citizens remains popular, with over 70 per cent supporting the status quo.
Ireland’s Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) responded to the bishop’s comments, saying that he would do well to reflect on the “actual consequences” of introducing legal abortion.
A spokeswoman for the PLC said, “Rather than introducing abortion in vague terms, we should learn the lesson from other countries where the distinction between necessary medical treatment in pregnancy and intentional taking of human life has been blurred, leading to abortion on demand.”