Scottish Catholic Observer

Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell has issued a grave warning about the dangers of the ‘anti-religious, anti-democratic agenda’ of the Green movement, saying he ‘cannot imagine any member of any of the world’s great faiths wishing to have any association with the Greens.’

Bishop Devine’s fears have been confirmed by the Scottish bishops’ parliamentary officer, and hostile mainstream media reaction to the bishop’s comments this week has provided further evidence of how unfriendly and unsympathetic British culture currently is to people of faith. Several media outlets wrongly claimed Bishop Devine had compared abortion clinics to Nazi concentration camps, an allegation the bishop’s spokesman said was ‘completely untrue.’

Green concerns

The crux of the Motherwell bishop’s comments focus on a recent incident where Christina Summers, a Green Party councillor in Brighton, had been expelled from the party’s working group for her rejection of same-sex ‘marriage.’ This incident, the bishop said, had ‘seen the mask has been torn away from the duplicitous Green Party that masquerades as an environmentalist organisation.’

“It would appear that the Green Party has its own special interpretation of equality that does not extend to include any notion of religious freedom,” he said. “Prejudice and discrimination against Christians are permitted. So to be a loyal member or supporter of the Green Party, Christians must abandon and repudiate their Christian values and conscience in favour of the extremist and intolerant Green Party agenda that suppresses diversity and freedom of expression.”

The bishop said he could not understand how any Christian could support the Green Party agenda after their actions.

“Its Christian members must find it an increasingly uncomfortable place to be,” he said. “Indeed I cannot imagine any member of any of the world’s great faiths choosing to support them in any election. Let Christians concentrate their minds wonderfully when casting their vote at future elections.”

Distorted coverage

In the course of his remarks, however, the bishop highlighted what he called a ‘positive event’ in Brighton, where the Green Party controls the local council, for which he received severe criticism from the mainstream media.

In Brighton, two Christian pro-life campaigners were cleared of criminal charges for displaying graphic images of abortion outside an abortion clinic.

“All who value freedom of speech and expression will welcome the dismissal of this case by the courts,” the bishop said. “As the two young campaigners explained, ‘All we were doing was showing what is taking place legally inside taxpayer funded abortion centres every day.’”

The bishop questioned why they had even been charged, saying that they had just been trying to show the ‘truth about abortion’ in the same way ‘photographs of the victims of Auschwitz and the Burma Railway brought home the horrors of such evil catastrophes far more effectively than a million pleading words.’ The bishop’s spokesman said he had been shocked by the distorted coverage of Bishop Devine’s comments.

“It was disappointing to read, in what was once considered to be a newspaper of some distinction, a sensationalised distortion of Bishop Devine’s statement,” he said.  “Even a 12-year-old child who had read the bishop’s statement could see that the assertion that Bishop Devine had compared abortion clinics to Auschwitz concentration camp had no basis in fact and was completely untrue.”

Radical secularism

John Deighan, the Scottish bishops’ parliamentary officer, said the Green Party here had long been possessed ‘by a radical secularism’ that was hostile to religious freedom and could also be seen in the coverage of the bishop’s comments.

“Two elections ago they came out against Catholic schools,” he said. “I think that showed the latent hostility that is there, since then it has only become more pronounced on moral issues such as euthanasia and those around the homosexual movement.”

He said this shift was a ‘pity’ because many of the concerns of the environmental movement ‘chime with many Christians.’

“On ideas such as personal responsibility, considering the impact of your life on others and distributism there could be a lot of common ground,” Mr Deighan said. “So it is strange they have become so ideologically secularist and hostile to religious values.”

Mr Deighan suggested the relative smallness of the Green movement had made it easy for a ‘small group of radicals’ to change its focus towards ‘trendy issues’ such as homosexuality.

— Read Bishop Devine’s statement in full at http://sconews.co.uk/opinion/22363/devine-green-movement/

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