Council forbids 16-yr-old to convert

Briefing.

From the Christian Institute: A Christian foster carer has been struck off because she allowed a Muslim child in her care to convert to Christianity. Neither the foster carer nor the girl can be named for legal reasons.

The girl, in her late teens, was interested in exploring Christianity before she was placed with the foster carer. But when the girl decided she wanted to be baptised, council officials said her carer had failed in her duty to preserve the girl's religion and should have used her influence to prevent the baptism from going ahead.

They said the girl should stay away from church for six months, and later struck the carer off the fostering register. The carer, who has over ten years experience looking after more than 80 children, is now challenging the local authority's decision. Her case is being backed by The Christian Institute's legal defence fund.

The carer is a practising Christian, and made it clear to the girl when she arrived that she could continue to practice her Muslim faith if she wanted to. In assessments before the baptism, the authorities said the girl's emotional needs were being met, and noted that the carer was showing understanding and respect for the girl's culture.

The carer's lawyers say there was no evidence that the change in the girl's religion would harm her, and argue that the authorities failed to listen to the girl's views.

The carer, an Anglican who attends a local evangelical church, said: 'I did initially try to discourage her. I offered her alternatives. I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the word go, 'I am interested and I want to come.' She sort of burst in.'

The carer said that the girl's social workers were fully aware that she was going to church and had not raised any objections. The girl had told her auxiliary social worker of her plans to convert before she was baptised in January last year, and the social worker had appeared to give her consent.

The Christian Institute's Mike Judge said: 'All people should be free to change or modify their religious beliefs. That surely must be a core human right in any free society.

'I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God. This is the sort of double standard which Christians are facing in modern Britain.

'In recent months we have seen grandparents, a nurse, adoption agencies, firemen, registrars, elderly care homes - and now a foster carer - being punished because of the Christian beliefs they hold. It has to stop.'

The carer's solicitor Nigel Priestley said: 'There is no doubt that the event that provoked the council was the decision by the girl to be baptised.

'This girl was 16 and has the right to make this choice, so for the council to react in this way is totally disproportionate. Even at this late hour, we hope that the council will resolve the issue.'

A council spokesman said: 'From the details provided, we believe that this information relates to a child who is the subject of a final care order in favour of the council. In those circumstances, we are unable to pass any comment.' [Christian Institute]

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Card. Kasper: I don't want the TAC

Update: he's at it again. H-t Cathcon (who has translated this from the Italian news agency): Sources close to the Vatican Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians, the Vatican ministry responsible for ecumenical dialogue recalled that the conversion was a strictly personal matter. 'We have not been consulted - in addition - we would not agree to a return as a group'

May we ask: if they don't agree with group reconciliations, what is this Pontifical Council for?

Briefing (06/12/07): Cardinal Kasper's remarks about a breakaway Anglican grouping seeking reconciliation with Rome beggar belief. What actually happens next is in the hands of the Pope. Although the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is not large in the UK, the welcome it receives will set an important precedent for other Anglican groups, notably Forward in Faith, which is still part of the mainstream Anglican Communion but rejects women priests. Elsewhere in the same issue of the Catholic Herald Kasper is quoted as saying 'We do not think of ecumenism in the context of return [to the Catholic Church].' The idea of ecumenism meaning people becoming Catholic is 'too simplistic' and an 'unrealistic utopia'. Well, it is also Our Lord's commission to the Church: to preach to all nations.

From the Catholic Herald: One of the Vatican’s most senior cardinals has dismissed the idea that a breakaway group of Anglicans might be received into the Catholic Church en masse – despite Benedict XVI’s personal support for such a move. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told The Catholic Herald: “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome.” The cardinal’s comments refer to the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a rebel group which claims to represent 400,000 people. Its bishops sent a letter to Rome last month requesting “full, corporate and sacramental union”. But the bishops did not send their letter to Cardinal Kasper. Instead they addressed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, it is understood, they expected a warmer reception.
It has been claimed that 60 Anglican parishes have joined the rebel group since their request became public.

Vatican insiders say that Benedict XVI is scrutinising the matter very closely and believes that the TAC is setting out a path that other Anglicans will follow.
One source said the Pope even gave his blessing to the TAC’s plenary assembly in October, when 60 bishops agreed to seek full communion with Rome. Each bishop reportedly signed a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the church altar.
Benedict XVI sent his message of support through Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the CDF.
But Cardinal Kasper, as president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, is likely to be cautious about any arrangement that might upset the official leaders of the other Christian churches – notably the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
The cardinal said on Monday: “We are on good terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury and as much as we can we are helping him to keep the Anglican community together.”
When asked whether he felt encouraged by the TAC’s request, the cardinal replied: “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome and I am not sure there are so many as you are speaking about.”
He added: “Of course, as a Catholic I am happy if one person joins our Catholic Church but I doubt such a big group is coming – I think there are still many questions to solve first.”
The cardinal made his comments just days after another Episcopal bishop announced his intention to seek full communion with the Catholic Church.
Bishop John B Lipscomb of southwest Florida is the fourth bishop this year to ask to be released from his Episcopal vows.
The subject of ecumenism also dominated discussions at the consistory in Rome last weekend, when Benedict XVI elevated 23 clergymen to the rank of cardinal.
The Pontiff told the assembled cardinals that they must be willing to shed their blood to spread the faith.
He singled out Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly, head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, and said his decision to elevate him was a way of expressing his “spiritual closeness and my affection” for Christians in Iraq. But Benedict XVI chose ecumenism as the main topic for debate at his meeting with all of the cardinals on the eve of the consistory.
Cardinal Kasper, who gave the opening address, said that ecumenism was not “an optional choice, but a sacred duty”.
Later in the day Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor proposed that the Holy See organise a “pan-Christian” meeting.
Benedict XVI returned to the same theme in his homily on Sunday. “Prayer for peace and unity constitutes your first and principal mission,” he told the assembled cardinals, “so that the Church may be healthy and compact”, a “sign and instrument of unity for the entire human race”.
The homily called on the cardinals, as “the senate of the Church”, to form one whole body under Christ. Commentators have suggested that the plea refers to the reluctance of some cardinals to accept the rulings of Summorum Pontificum, which allows priests to celebrate the traditional form of the Mass without the permission of a bishop.
The consistory also represented the first major test for the Vatican’s new director of papal liturgies, Fr Guido Marini, who replaced Archbishop Piero Marini in October.
Observers noticed several “traditionalist” touches that set the proceedings apart from those directed by Archbishop Marini, who was known as a liturgical innovator.
The Pope’s gold-embroidered mitre, for instance, belonged to the late 19-century Pope Pius IX, and his antique gilded throne was used by Leo XIII, who died in 1903. The consistory was held in St Peter’s Basilica and not in St Peter’s Square or the Vatican’s audience hall.

What can one say? Will St Peter say 'It is not my policy to bring that many Anglicans into Heaven'?

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Blair: it would have been a 'palaver' to convert while PM

Briefing: it has proved too much of a 'palaver' for Tony Blair to convert at all - even though he went through the ceremony of reception into the Church.

From the BBC: Tony Blair has been explaining his decision to delay converting to Roman Catholicism until after he had resigned as prime minister.
He said it would have been a "palaver" if he had acted while in office.
In a BBC interview, Mr Blair denied suggestions he had delayed the decision out of fear it would be harder to be prime minister as a Roman Catholic.

See the full story here.

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E&W Bishops stand in way of Anglican conversions

Briefing and comment: it is not surprising that the Bishops of England and Wales do not look forward to 'high' Anglicans becoming Catholics. Not only would such converts, like many converts, in putting the final correct pieces into their picture of Christian theology, be more orthodox than most Catholics, including Catholic clergy, but fashionable liberal theology disaproves of the whole notion of conversion to Catholicism, preferring the idea that we should somehow 'converge with', not convert, people holding erroneous doctrines. Damian Thompson's comments will be based on his personal contacts with 'Anglo Catholic' clergy.

From Damian Thompson: The current hierarchy feels no more warmly towards conservative Anglo-Catholics than it does towards the Latin Mass Society. It will do the bare minimum to accommodate converts. The paradox is that many Anglo-Catholic parishes celebrate the liturgy in a manner that corresponds far more closely to Benedict's aesthetic of worship than the makeshift, sloppy services found in ordinary Catholic parishes.

No wonder the flying bishops are unhappy and confused. If they submit to Rome, they would like to do so under a truly sympathetic papacy, but who knows how long it will last? The best solution would be for the Pope to appoint a successor to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor who is in his own image - the Dominican writer Fr Aidan Nichols, say. But the chances of that happening are slim. We are heading towards another missed opportunity

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Blair refuses to answer questions about his abortion views

Briefing and comment: Blair tried to explain his notion of 'faith' in a lecture, which only served to confirm that for him Catholicism has no moral content. He celebrated with Stonewall when the Sexual Orientation Regulations was passed.

From CFNews: Tony Blair's office has replied to SPUC Director John Smeaton's letter in which he asked Mr Blair if, in the light of his reception into the Catholic church, he would tell us if he now repudiates:

* voting for abortion up to birth three times

* personally endorsing his government policy of supplying abortion and birth control drugs and devices to schoolgirls as young as 11 without parental knowledge or consent

* his government's commitment to the promotion of abortion on demand as a universal fundamental human right

* personally championing destructive experiments on human embryos

* his government introducing legislation which has led to a law which allows, and in certain circumstances requires, doctors to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients;

John Smeaton writes : 'He has refused, point blank, to comment on, still less to repudiate, these positions.

Here is the reply in italics, interspersed with my comments on it:

9th April 2008

Dear Mr Smeaton

Thank you for writing about the important issue of pro-life.

Mr Blair recognises that this is a subject of great concern to many people around the world and on which a variety of deeply held convictions are held.

This kind of statement from a public figure all too often prefaces a letter which does not answer the questions raised.

However the Foundation inevitably has to focus on a limited number of issues, especially as it develops its thinking and builds up its resources.

I didn't write to Mr Blair's Foundation or to Mr Blair about his Foundation. I wrote to Mr Blair, at his office, to ask him whether he repudiates his anti-life record in parliament and government.

It plans to concentrate initially on the following four areas: how the different faiths might work more closely together to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals;

I did ask Mr Blair about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), specifically how the Labour government under his premiership (and under his successor) interprets the MDGs to include a right to abortion. Why can't Mr Blair comment on that aspect of the MDGs, if the MDGs is one of the focuses of his Foundation?

educational projects, especially producing good material for school children here and abroad; an annual course at Yale University on faith and globalisation, with links to other institutions;

Can Mr Blair tell us whether this educational material and his course will teach students that almost all world religions not only recognise the intrinsic value and sanctity of human life but condemn, in general, abortion and euthanasia?

and support for The Co-Exist Foundation's plans to establish Abraham House, a meeting place for the Abrahamic faiths in central London. This means that, at the moment, the Foundation will not be able to address the issue of pro-life, weighty though it is.

Again, I didn't ask the Foundation to address pro-life issues - I asked Mr Blair to address them.

Nor, I am afraid, will Mr Blair be able to enter into correspondence on his personal beliefs on this or indeed other issues.

I did not ask Mr Blair to enter into correspondence on his personal beliefs. I asked him, a public figure, about his public record on matters of current public policy - under which hundreds of thousands of unborn British people, and unborn people in developing countries, are killed every year. As I have mentioned before, as a Catholic myself, I do not believe that public figures can be allowed to protect themselves from public scrutiny simply by being received into the Catholic Church.

I am very sorry to have to send you what you will probably find a disappointing reply

Yes, no reply at all is pretty disappointing.

but I hope that the above explains the reasons for it.

The letter singularly fails to explain the reasons for such a non-reply. [SPUC]

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Blair supports Stonewall

Briefing. NB Stonewall are really very nasty indeed. The ridiculed Archbishop Nichols of Birmingham as a shortlisted candidate for 'bigot of the year' for his opposition to SORs. If Nichols becomes Cardinal, perhaps Blair will be less welcome in Westminster.

From CFNews: Stonewall's tenth star-studded Equality Dinner saw actors rub shoulders with ministers at the Dorchester Hotel on Thursday night. The event, sponsored by UBS for the third year, raised £320,000 for Stonewall's campaigning work. A sizeable chunk of the funds raised came in thanks to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair - the same Tony Blair who was received into the Catholic Church only a few months ago by top English prelate Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor.

The opportunity to have tea with Tony Blair secured a bid of £20,000 in an auction held at the dinner.

Incidentally Blair was the keynote speaker at last year's Stonewall fundraiser. During his speech Blair thanked the gathered attendees for their help in passing his legislation to permit homosexual civil unions. Blair said that of all the pro-homosexual legislation passed in recent years, the civil partnership law gave him more than just pride, 'it actually brought real joy.' The first same-sex civil union caused him to give 'a little sort of skip,' he said, it was 'just so alive, and I was so struck by it.'

Another piece of legislation passed under Blair, the Sexual Orientation Legislation, affects the Catholic Church directly. In addition to Christian schools being forbidden from teaching against homosexuality, adoption agencies, Catholic included, must permit adoption of children by homosexual couples. Blair ignored warnings from a UK Catholic bishop that Catholic adoption agencies would have to close if such legislation were passed. And guess which agency was most concerned with ensuring that the Catholic Church could not maintain its freedom of conscience on adoptions? You guessed it - Stonewall.

LifeSiteNews.com warned, prior to Blair's reception into the Catholic Church - as did other faithful Catholics - that should Blair be accepted into the Church without repenting of his pro-abortion and pro-homosexual past it would cause scandal. Those warnings were ignored. In a press release issued the day after Blair's December 21st reception into the Church at a private ceremony in the chapel at Cardinal O'Connor's personal residence, the Cardinal said he was 'very glad' to welcome Blair into the Church. John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) commented on the matter saying, 'During his premiership, Tony Blair became one of the world's most significant architects of the culture of death - promoting abortion, experiments on human embryos, including on cloned human embryos, and euthanasia by neglect.' To respectfully contact the Archdiocese of Westminster email : Abhreception@rcdow.org.uk [LifeSiteNews]

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Blair's pathetic apologia

Briefing. But look! We're quoted by Life Site News! Their story was picked up by CFNews.

From CFNews: Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of Britain, told an audience at Westminster Cathedral in London this week, 'If you are someone 'of faith' it is the focal point of belief in your life. There is no conceivable way that it wouldn't affect your politics.'

Blair was the first of the high profile lecturers at this year's Cardinal's Lectures at the cathedral, the seat of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Blair's speech at the cathedral is meant to herald the opening of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the goals of which are to 'promote respect, friendship and understanding between the major religious faiths'. But Blair's efforts to promote religion as a positive force in the world, has met with open derision from Christians in Britain who watched for ten years as he and his government 'plunged Britain into an ethical abyss.'

Blair said that there is a trend in British society, reflected around the world, that religious belief is at best a private matter, or one relegated to extremists. But he intends to argue, he said, that 'religious faith is a good thing in itself, that so far from being a reactionary force, it has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, and can and should be a force for progress.' 'But it has to be rescued on the one hand from the extremist and exclusionary tendency within religion today; and on the other from the danger that religious faith is seen as an interesting part of history and tradition but with nothing to say about the contemporary human condition,' he continued. Blair's expressions of respect for religious belief have rung hollow for Christians and pro-life advocates who spent the years of his premiership fighting the steady stream of intensely anti-life and anti-Christian policies from Blair's Labour government. A stream that continues under his successor, Gordon Brown.

When it was rumoured last summer that Blair was seeking to be received into the Catholic Church, the editors of the Catholic news site, Catholic Action UK, were incredulous: 'Is it possible that, having voted for every anti-life and anti-family measure put before Parliament, closed down the Catholic adoption agencies, criminalised the teaching of the Catholic faith in schools, and removed charitable status from large numbers of Catholic charities, he's going to enter the Church?'

John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), wrote in February 2007, at the time Blair said he would be stepping down as Prime Minister, 'In general, there is virtually no area of pro-life or pro-family ethical concern which has not been made worse by the Blair government'. The website of the Cardinal's Lectures, says, 'In office as Prime Minster of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 he transformed Britain's public services through investment and reform.' There are few Christians or pro-life and pro-family activists in Britain who would disagree. Blair was one of the world's most powerful supporters and collaborators in the work of the homosexualist political movement to abolish the traditional legal protections for natural marriage, work which also had the effect of suppressing freedom of expression for religious people in the UK. He personally voted three times to permit abortion up to birth before becoming Prime Minister.

As PM he promoted the practice of secret abortions for schoolgirls without their parents being informed; he has encouraged use of the abortifacient morning-after pill for young women; he championed destructive research on human embryos in the laboratory. His government was complicit in the population control movement, most notably in its support for China's brutal One-Child policy. When rumours were circulating in June 2007 that Blair was to be received into the Church, Smeaton wrote that although SPUC is not affiliated with any religion, 'We would be very concerned at the impact on Muslims and their commitment to the pro-life cause if Mr Blair became a Muslim. We have similar concern for the impact on Christians if Mr. Blair joins the Catholic church without publicly repudiating his publicly professed pro-abortion and pro-IVF positions.'

Many British Catholics expressed shock and dismay in December last year when the Cardinal of Westminster, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, did in fact receive Blair into the Catholic Church without clarifying whether he had repented any of his very public rejections of Catholic teaching. Since Blair's reception in December, no further comments have been forthcoming from the Cardinal's office in the face of what was described by many Catholics, particularly those who spent years labouring in the pro-life movement against Blair's anti-life projects, as a 'scandal' and a 'slap in the face'. Meanwhile, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor has told the Guardian that Britain's secularising trend is contrary to the British national identity. 'People are looking for a common good in this country. A very large number of people are saying, 'What is it that binds British people together?'' the cardinal said. 'There is no other heritage than the Judaeo-Christian heritage in this country.' He warned that abandoning that heritage for a 'totally secular view of life' would lead the nation down 'a very dangerous path'. [LifeSiteNews]

Commenting on Blair's speech at Westminster Cathedral, Father Tim Finigan writes in his blog 'Blair is keen that 'faith' in general should be respected as a force for 'progress.' We could ask with Chesterton 'progress towards what?' People of faiths should not be exclusive or 'extremist', they should be 'open' and not 'closed.' He praises Karen Armstrong's 'remarkable' book that talks about the evolution of religious thought from 'earliest times' when it was irrational and unforgiving, to 'modern times' when faiths share common values and purpose.

Therefore he is setting up a Foundation which will pursue the Millennium Development Goals, and publish information about the different faiths in various media. The Foundation will help those of any faith who stand for peaceful co-existence but 'reject the extremist and divisive notion that faiths are in fundamental struggle against each other.' It will promote the idea of faith itself as 'something dynamic, modern and full of present relevance.' Irrelevance is represented by 'stark dogmatism and empty ritualism.' Whether there can be beautiful dogmas or grace-filled rituals is left unsaid.

Reading the lecture, I was struck by how cogently this globalistic pan-religious niceness ignores the real questions over which people of faith disagree with one another and, more, with the humanists whom Blair seems also to want on board the global faith fest. The questions that he raises have been addressed brilliantly by Cardinal Ratzinger in 'Truth and Tolerance' but as far as this lecture is concerned, that book might as well never have been written.

To give an example of how the lecture blithely ignores the practical detail related to the high sounding principles it wafts before us, consider these two passages:

'Faith corrects, in a necessary and vital way, the tendency humankind has to relativism. It says there are absolutes - like the inalienable worth and dignity of every human being - that can never be sacrificed'.

- except in the case of the abortion up to birth of disabled babies?

'Faith is a living and growing belief, not stuck in one time in history, but moving with time, with reason, with knowledge, informed by scientific and technological discovery not in antithesis to it, as well as directing those discoveries toward humane ends'.

- such as destructive research on human embryos?

In the peroration, there is an interesting point which I would like to highlight since I believe that it neatly demonstrates that Blair fails to address a crucial problem for faith in Britain today. He says:

'If people of different faiths can co-exist happily, in mutual respect and solidarity, so can our world'.

The assumption seems to be that it is people of faith who are the problem. If only people of faith could sink their differences and live in peace, it seems, then all would be find and dandy. In the Britain that has emerged from decades of increasingly secularist government, (not particularly impeded in any way by Tony Blair) the far more disturbing spectre is that of the secularists who are militant, extremist, closed, exclusive etc. (put in the other nasty-denoting words of your choice). The vaunted global mutual respect and solidarity will not survive long in the areas where their writ runs. 1437.12

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Pope receives Muslim into the Church

Action: prayers, please, for Magdi Allam, received into the Catholic Church by the Holy Father during the Easter Vigil. This is clearly a big statement by the Pope about the Church's mission to convert all nations. The courageous Mr Allam needs our prayers.

Hat-tip to Damian Thompson, who has more commentary.

Mr Allam speaks: His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

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