by Stratford Caldecott
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing a concerted attack on Christianity and on the institution that the Church deems the fundamental cell of society, namely the family founded on the marriage of a man and a woman. In the US, Archbishop Chaput and other bishops have reacted strongly to the “contraception mandate” – the plans of the Obama administration to force Catholic agencies indirectly to fund contraception and abortion services. In the UK, the High Court ruled “unlawful” the practice of local town councils to open their meetings with a prayer. A government scheme permits girls as young as 13 to receive secret contraceptive implants at school without the knowledge of their parents. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned against the movement to legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia as representing a disastrous shift in the “moral and spiritual atmosphere”. In both the US and UK, where homosexual unions are increasingly regarded as normal, pressure is growing for the right to homosexual “marriage”, contrary to the dictionary definition as well as the longstanding universal tradition that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman, ultimately for the sake of offspring. (The question of offspring has been blurred by the development of IVF and surrogacy, and the question of same-sex unions by gender “reassignment”, whether by legal decree or by surgery.) See Christian Concern for these and other relevant news stories. [Read more...]
