Scottish Catholic Observer

The letter sent this month by Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell to the Prime Minister, calling for an inquiry into ‘whether the new equality and sexual orientation legislation infringes upon the rights of others and especially those who practise the Christian faith,’ raises many important issues. It is a public acknowledgement of the fact that Christians in Britain today are an oppressed community.

Christianity is the one element in society against which it is perfectly respectable—even mandatory—to discriminate. The bishop’s letter gave a brief outline of some of the flagrant instances of anti-Christian bigotry: Registrars sacked for not wishing to conduct same-sex ceremonies, BandB owners prosecuted for barring unmarried partners from double rooms, a nurse threatened with dismissal for offering to pray for a patient, the banning of the cross in workplaces, and so on.

This viciously anti-Christian climate was fostered by the late Labour Government which, ironically, depended on many Catholic votes. The man who initially presided over the anti-Christian legislative pogrom that eventually forced the closure of Catholic adoption agencies—Tony Blair—now professes the Catholic Faith. If he is sincere, let him admit the errors of his administration and join the fight to redress them.

Nor should anyone imagine the advent of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government offers any hope of amelioration to Christians. As Bishop Devine rightly told David Cameron in his letter, the Coalition Government is ‘far from neutral’ on Christian issues: “Indeed in some respects your government’s position goes further than even previous Labour Governments dared to tread.”

That is correct, as Mr Cameron’s present drive to introduce new legislation extending full marriage rights, in place of civil partnerships, to homosexuals indicates. Under Mr Cameron, the Tory Party has severed its traditional attachment to Christian moral values. The Liberal Democrats have long been the most hostile party of all to Christian morality: remember David Steel’s sponsorship of the Abortion Act.

The most recent high-profile act of aggression against Christians was the High Court decision to ban a Christian couple from fostering children because they would not undertake to teach them that homosexuality was acceptable.

After a series of assertions calculated to diminish the status of the Christian religion, the judgement stated: “The laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity, in whatever form. The aphorism that ‘Christianity is part of the common law of England’ is mere rhetoric.”

On the contrary, it is the judges’ remarks that were mere rhetoric. The Equality Act under which the case was brought was passed ‘by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,’ as were all the other statutes administered by those judges. If the ‘laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity,’ why do bishops sit ex officio in the House of Lords? Why was ‘the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty’ whose assent prefaces all laws anointed in a religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey to inaugurate her reign? Why is there a statutorily established Church of England if Christianity has no place in our laws and usages? In Scotland, judges still wear red crosses on their robes commemorating the foundation of the College of Justice by a Bull of Pope Clement VII.

It is legal illiteracy to claim that Christianity is not embedded in our laws, most of whose notions of equity were inspired by Christian morality. This judgement, in its aggressively anti-Christian wording, was judicial activism of the worst kind, such as has already harassed Christians in the US and which is now spreading to this country, driven by the fanatical secularism of the European Union.

The EU, the United Nations and the viscerally anti-Christian Barack Obama administration are spearheading a jihad against Christian values, promoting abortion, homosexuality and similar politically correct causes globally.

In Britain, the BBC and much of the media, the militant atheists (loud but numerically insignificant) and the political class are trying to eradicate Christian culture and practice.

Many of the laws of which Christians have recently fallen foul were passed to give specially protected status to homosexuals. Yet statistics published last September by the Office for National Statistics showed that male homosexuals, so far from representing up to 10 per cent of the population as their pressure groups pretend, amount to just 1.3 per cent; lesbians are 0.6 per cent. The same survey found 71 per cent of the population professing Christianity.

If politicians think it is a good career move to alienate 70 per cent of the public in the interests of 1.3 per cent, they may be in for an electoral shock. It is up to Catholics to help target the culprits and evict them from parliament. Bishop Devine’s letter must not become a one-off protest: an organised fight-back against our persecutors is now an urgent necessity.