Competing rights

The Church of England has weighed into the debate on homosexual rights, by supporting the Roman Catholics' stance (in the main!).

The great problem it seems to me is that this is where we are with New Labour's ill-considered lawmaking. They have allowed the zealots out of the closet - literally! What we now have is the Church against a phalanx of securalists, libertines, free-expressionists, atheists, and, quite frankly, illiberal liberals!

All that it will do is encourage the fringe elements who will, on the one hand, use their version of Christian thinking to insult and speak ill of homosexuals, and, on the other hand, for those with a "thing" against the Church to shout insults back. What good is that?

I saw both Angela Eagle and Dr Evan Harris, MPs of the "Church is in the past" persuasion, speak on television and basically traduce the comments of the Archbishop of Westminster. Eagle implied the Church was hateful of gays and Harris suggested that the Church discriminated against homosexuals and could not be above the law.

They don't ever want to repeat what has been said oft before. That the Church does not hate or abuse those of a homosexual inclination. None of us knows, or frankly cares, what another member of a particular congregation gets up to. That is not the point. However, it has always been the case that the doctrine of the Church is that the two estates of being are either celibacy or matrimony. The Barrabas tendency thinks this all old hat! OK, not all Christians live up to the ideal, to the positive elements of this teaching. But that is no reason for changing it. Christians believe in Revealed Truth. If the World sees it differently, then there is bound to be a clash of principles.

There seems to be a new persecution of the Church evolving. The synogue of the Libertines has re-awakened, like the Phoenix. They are shouting - hypocrites, the Church is backward, priests are this that and the other! Can they hear themselves with their own hatred? How sad!

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