News

By Gudrun Schultz

  SCOTLAND, United Kingdom, March 12, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Scotland’s Labour Party will feel the increasing distress of the country’s Catholics over liberal moral policies in the coming May election, warned a senior Scottish bishop Sunday, the Scotsman reported earlier today.

“For generations, including myself, Catholics in their droves tended to vote consistently for the Labour Party,” said Bishop Joseph Devine in an interview with Radio 4’s Sunday programme. “But over the past few months it has been very noticeable, in conversations I’ve had with all manner of people, that that allegiance has been severely tested to the point, I think, of being broken.”

  The bishop charged the Labour Party’s leadership with creating “a new kind of morality devoid of any Christian principle or background,” and said it would be “ill-founded” of the party to assume that traditional support for the party would continue among Scotland’s working class.

  While Bishop Devine said it was up to the individual Catholic to “exercise their votes responsibly, according to their conscience,” he said he would let people know what party he was going to vote for, saying, “I have never done that before.”

“I’ll not ask people to follow me but if they want to take that lead that’s fine enough.”

  Parliament’s decision last year, led by a Labour majority, to permit the adoption of children by same-sex couples was a key factor in losing the party Catholic support, Bishop Devine said. In February 2006 the bishop sent a letter to First Minister Jack McConnell condemning the proposal as “yet another violation of family life.”

  Saying he was “not prepared to stand by and watch the destruction of Christian values and truth,” Bishop Devine said political correctness was hijacking family values.

“What started as a tolerance and compassion for gays has developed into the suppression of the majority heterosexual lifestyle,” the bishop stated. “Traditional family values are in the dock and the judge and jury are composed of politically correct extremists.”

  Bishop Devine said he anticipated voting for the Christian People’s Alliance, formed in Scotland in 2001, but would wait until he had heard the policies of all parties before making a final decision.

  See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

  Scotland Bishop Blasts Parliament Decision to Allow Gay Adoption
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06022703.html

  Scotland Bishop Says Homosexual Adoption Being Pushed by “Politically Correct Zealots”
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/apr/06040607.html

  Scottish Government Says Churches Can Exclude Homosexuals From Adoption
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06061307.html