Posts Tagged ‘Children’

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Catholic Care’s unexpected triumph paves the way for other groups forced to close or dissociate from the church to reopen as Catholic organisations.

Religious campaigners said that the judge’s ruling would galvanise growing resistance to Labour’s gay rights agenda, while secular activists warned of a “tidal wave” of similar legal challenges from Catholic groups.

Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough, and Hallam in South Yorkshire, launched the legal action saying it would have to give up its work finding homes for children if it had to comply with the 2007 Equality Act

The law banned adoption agencies from discriminating against homosexual prospective parents.

The adoption agency claimed that a clause of the legislation – Regulation 18 – should permit charities to continue to refuse gay couples if the stated aim of the charity was to provide services to people of a particular sexual orientation. The loophole was inserted to ensure that gay charities could not be sued for discrimination by heterosexual couples.

Catholic Care’s application to write an explicit reference to serving heterosexuals into its constitution was rejected by the Charities Commission, but today Mr Justice Briggs ordered the commission to review its decision. He accepted that the adoption agency could still provided a public benefit even if it did not consider homosexual parents.

The Rt Rev Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds, said that the judgement would “help in our determination to continue to provide this invaluable service to benefit children, families and communities”.

He added: “We look forward to producing evidence to the Charity Commission to support the position that we have consistently taken through this process: that without being able to use this exemption, children without families would be seriously disadvantaged.”

Catholic Care was the last of Britain’s eleven Catholic adoption agencies to resist the changes. Some charities like the Catholic Children’s Society, Westminster, and the Catholic Children’s Rescue Society in Salford decided to close their adoption services, while others agreed to accept the regulations and cut ties with the church.

Christian campaigners said that the judgement opened the door for other adoption agencies to reopen under a Catholic banner.

Andrea Williams from the Christian Legal Centre said: “This is a great result and a step in the right direction. It’s upsetting that the other adoption agencies have been forced to close, but this ruling will help them reopen if they so wish.

“The ruling supports Christian groups which want to operate freely and according to traditional values with regard to the nature of family.”

Philippa Gitlin, director of the Caritas Social Action Network, an umbrella group of Catholic charities, said that the trustees of charities that had adapted to comply with the legislation would “carefully consider” the ruling.

She said: “It is entirely a matter for specific consideration by the trustees of each charity what action, if any, they decide is feasible and appropriate in the light of today’s judgement. ”

Secular campaigners condemned the judge’s decision as “alarming” and “a major setback” for gay rights.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “It is unfortunate that the court has enabled Catholic Care to exploit what was obviously an error in the drafting of the equality legislation. The loophole this created was never intended to be used this way.

“If the Charity Commission reverses its previous decision – as the court is asking it to – we can look forward to a tidal wave of similar challenges from bigoted Catholic organisations who are determined not to accord any rights to gay people at all.”

Interesting to see this development. It would seem the Church is likely to start to exert its influence further in light of unhappiness about the way Labour have conducted themselves to matters that are of great importance to the Church and wider community.

Jim Ferguson

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What happens when a nation obsoletes the traditional family structure?

Can a nation survive without strong families? You need to know the answer to this question, because strong marriages and families in Britain are devolving to unprecedented levels. But if we reach back into antiquity, there is one powerful empire that does offer a precedent—a chilling one. But things in modern Britain are different, right?

On February 14, the UK Office for National Statistics reported that the percentage of Britons getting married for a second time is falling, but not because marriages are lasting any longer. Marriages are still breaking up at record rates. It is just that now fewer people are choosing to remarry following a divorce.

Cohabitation is the new trend. And Britain is a world leader.

My mistake. Cohabitation is actually the old “new trend.” The new new trend is single mothers who have never lived with a man at all choosing to live alone on state benefits. According to new research by sociologist Geoff Dench, these premeditated single mothers believe they have no need for a spouse and that their children have no need for a father.

Of the one in four mothers who currently live without a man in their house, half have made the conscious determination to live alone.

How dangerously ignorant.

The increasingly rapid breakdown of the traditional family is an ominous indicator because it coincides with several other uncomfortable facts. Besides leading Europe in crazy “families,” Britain also leads in rates of obesity, public drunkenness, drug use, and sexually transmitted infections. It is also a leader in illiteracy, crime, teenage pregnancy and, well, brand awareness.

Is it any wonder that Britain is also the leader in family breakdown?

Yet when faced with this list of disturbing accomplishments, it is amazing how blind many people are to the looming social and national disaster facing the country.

History shows that once national family life breaks down, societies are on the downhill slide. “[T]he strength of any nation depends on the strength of its families,” Gerald Flurry wrote in the March 2009 Trumpet. “Family is the rock-solid foundation on which a country’s superstructure is erected. That was the case for both America and Britain.” Note the past tense.

Strong families were also the concrete foundation of the Roman Empire during its heyday. “Back then, when people talked about Rome falling, they were scoffed at and scorned,” noted Mr. Flurry. “When Seneca, the famous Roman, warned that Rome would fall—even telling people why it would fall—the people ignored him. In the words of Seneca, one of the foundational reasons Rome would fall was the fact that ‘they divorce in order to remarry. They marry in order to divorce.’”

Seneca warned that family breakdown would destroy the Roman Empire—and it did! And it is destroying Britain (and America) today.

In his masterpiece, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbons identified five major causes that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. First on the list was breakdown of the family. The other factors included increased taxation, an insatiable craving for pleasure, an unsustainable buildup of armaments, and the decay of religion.

Doesn’t Rome before the fall sound like today’s United Kingdom? The looming disaster is hard to miss.

Some few in Britain acknowledge something is wrong. But there is a conspicuous—and ominous—lack of drive for action. Even those politicians who publicly endorse the idea of supporting traditional families have shown through decades of inaction that they don’t have the will to stop the downhill slide and make the controversial changes necessary to get families back on track.

Writer Melanie Phillips suggests things are to a state now that the government should give dowries to men who get married for the first time. This would “increase their worth to women” and “send a powerful signal that men are not worthless creeps but are essential to family life.”

Wow. How the British man has fallen since the feminist revolution—to think that state-funded dowries are needed to show that men are not worthless in family life, of all things!

A real man should have his own career and be able to provide for his own—before getting married. And he should be the solid core of that marriage and family for the rest of his life!

Yet according to some, British family life is not in crisis. “[T]his country has never been broken by anyone or anything,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “[F]or all the challenges, I don’t believe Britain is broken—I think it’s the best country in the world. I believe in Britain.”

Sounds just like something Seneca’s countrymen might have said.

All the while, nationwide collapse is thundering closer as the bulkheads snap under the pressure. The evidence is clear. A host of studies have shown that stable families result in children who are less prone to violent crime, better educated, less likely to take drugs, healthier physically, healthier mentally, and less likely to have teenage pregnancies.

Why do we have children today who publicly harass and denigrate their teachers, calling them fat and obese? Why does London have a higher crime rate than Istanbul? Why do government officials feel the need to hand out morning-after pills to 11-year-olds? Why are British girls having up to four abortions by their 18th birthday?

Because there has been a serious breakdown, of one kind or another, in those children’s families.

And because nothing is changing, Britain as a nation will—just like its families—fall apart. History provides no examples of societies that can remain viable without viable families. Even the mighty Roman Empire fell.

It is cause and effect.

God says that when you break His laws on marriage and family life, He will send curses as correction. Through the Prophet Jeremiah, God says, “For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right” (Jeremiah 23:10).

In this verse, God says there is a direct connection between marriages and escalating national problems. The phrase “their course is evil” implies aggressively running after evil ways like runners in a race. As Melanie Phillips points out, British society is totally geared toward not only promoting single motherhood, but towards denigrating fathers. Britain is steaming full-speed ahead contrary to God’s laws.

Therefore curses are inevitable.

Jeremiah says the land will mourn and the pleasant places will be ruined. Britain is suffering intense natural disasters. Over the past few years it has suffered devastating crop failures and cattle diseases. Flooding has taken huge tolls. Severe snowstorms have blanketed the nation. Economically, its place as the world’s financial capital is gone, the pound is under attack, and the nation is on the brink of financial collapse.

The phrase “their force is not right” implies a failure in military action. The Hebrew word for “force” means valor, victory, mastery, might, mighty (act, power), power, strength. It’s a military word. God warns us that national sins destroy military might. Today, British troops are worn down and short on equipment. Troops are heading home from failures in Iraq and will probably come home from a failure in Afghanistan soon as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Daily Mail lamented that if Argentina were to take the Falklands, the bitter truth is that Britain doesn’t even have the resources to send a task force to retake the islands. That is a far cry from the nation that once boasted the world’s largest empire backed by its most powerful navy.

But that is the thing with curses; eventually they result in destruction. Family breakdown in Britain is breaking the nation. And worse is yet to come. If you don’t believe it, just ask Rome—or the now largely vanished British Empire.

No matter ones Religious belief or lack of it this article is pertinent and relevant in many ways.
The facts speak for themselves.

Jim Ferguson

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Pope could give Labour Party ‘hell’

catholic leader responds to Jim Murphy’s speech appealing for religious voters’ support

By Katrine Bussey

The Pope could give Labour “hell” over its record on family matters, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland said yesterday.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien hit out in the wake of a speech by Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy in which he attempted to appeal to religious voters.

Cardinal O’Brien accused the government of making “a systematic and unrelenting attack on family values”.

With Pope Benedict XVI due to visit Scotland later this year, the churchman revealed he had told Labour Holyrood leader Iain Gray that “he could really give you hell for what you have done in our country over the past 10 years”.

Cardinal O’Brien has criticised government policies on stem cell experimentation on human embryos, civil partnerships, same-sex adoption and abortion.

He said: “There’s a whole series of measures which have been legislated for over the past 10 years which are against basic Christian standards.

“I feel on behalf of my own Church and peoples of other faiths as well, that I am entering into this daily contest, fighting for the standards by which we stand as Christians here.”

Cardinal O’Brien said he had met the Pope in Rome recently and also said he had spoken to Mr Gray about the pontiff’s visit to Scotland.

He said the Labour Party had “accepted some praise” for playing a role in attracting the Pope to Scotland.

Cardinal O’Brien continued: “I said to Iain Gray ‘when the Pope does come I hope he emphasises to you the Christian teaching when he’s here, that’s what John Paul II did when he was here’.

“And in some ways I said to him he could really give you hell for what you have done in our country over the past 10 years, demeaning family and married life and these other things that have been happening over the past 10 years.”

Mr Murphy said on Tuesday night that “faith has always been important to Labour”.

The Scottish secretary, who was delivering the Progress lecture, stated: “In the US, faith has long played a central part in politics.

“Not surprising for a country where 60% of people say that God plays an important part in their lives.

“But it’s wrong to think that it plays no role in British politics.”

Mr Murphy, a Catholic, added research from the time of the 2005 general election suggested Labour support was strongest among religious people.

The Pope was invited to the UK by Prime Minister Gordon Brown during a private audience, and earlier this month the Catholic Church confirmed Scotland would be included in the visit which is expected to take place in the autumn.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit will be the first since predecessor John Paul II’s visit in 1982.

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I believe that the future of our children and our families is at stake. That sounds a little dramatic but in reality I believe it to be true. Surely encouraging parents to stay together and assisting families to grow together and to actually have a safe future for our children is uppermost in the mind of every caring family across the country.

Conservatives have the unity and strength of vision to ensure that we re-capture the very essence of safe communities and ensure that Britain is a strong foundation and corner stone of happy family life. Everything revolves around the strong family unit and we as Conservatives are striving to ensure that Britain has that strength of purpose.

I believe the following video shows clearly what very ordinary families are feeling right now about Conservative policy and our stand to provide a safe future for our children and subsequent generations.

Jim Ferguson

Watch the video featuring Julie and visit the webpage listing policies for the family.

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