New Opportunities For Catholics

"RCIA on Thursday nights....yes.....I might be able to make that.."

It seems the neighbours are making changes to the monarchy.  The Queen of England and her various realms have assented to Britain's abolishing the law that excludes a Catholic from marrying an heir to the throne. Up until now if an heir married a member of our Church they were excluded from the succession.  The heir could marry anyone else - Jew, Hindu, Muslim etc, but not a Catholic.  So that is good news. 

I presume the line of succession will now be revised to bring back those who married Catholics - Prince Michael of Kent, for example, (he's so far down it won't make a difference, but it reverses discrimination). 

The law will still require the monarch to be a member of the Church of England - that's fair enough, for now, given that he or she is the head of that ecclesial community.  It would require a reorganisation of the Church of England, perhaps even disestablishment, to allow the monarch be a Catholic.  That might come in the future if a monarch renounced his or her position as head of the communion and transferred it to a bishop. All things are possible. 

In the meantime, I wonder if those who converted to Anglicanism to marry an heir will now think better of their decision and come home?  I hope so, the door is always open.

Past The Point Of No Return......Well Past

Unfit to be parents....because they are Christians

There are significant moments in human history when an event or a decision reveals that humanity has gone so far in the wrong direction that it is not possible to turn back without first meeting a major cultural disaster.  In recent history we see, for example, two moments in Russian history, first when Lenin arrived back from his exile in Switzerland, stepping onto the platform of Finland Station in St Petersburg, and then that moment when the members of the Imperial Family were shot - the Soviet Union was born and the world about to enter one of the darkest phases of its history.  Or again when Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich waving his agreement with Hitler in the air.  Some maintain that Chamberlain was not conned by Hitler at all - he knew what was coming - his diaries record so at the time - he just bought more time to prepare.  But at that moment Europe was already over the brink.

An article on the BBC website has reminded me that we are in a similar situation today.  It concerns the ruling of a British court deciding that a Christian couple cannot foster children because they cannot say that homosexuality is okay.    We have seen other decisions  like this in the recent past, but the judges' comments are most interesting.  According to the article:

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation "should take precedence" over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds.

I was talking to a lawyer friend of mine and to say that he is retching reading the judgement would be an understatement, one might say, I fear for his sanity.  Other reactions: Christian Legal Centre and Fr Finigan. 

This judgement is a bad judgement, and even though the judges, probably desperately afraid of seeing to be discriminating against Christians and breaching religious freedom rights, have said that their judgement does not discriminate against Christians.  Seems, m'lauds,  your wigs are on too tight - you might not like to think of yourselves as discriminating against Christians but your wishful thinking, m'lauds, is just that: wishful thinking; you are discriminating against Christians: you have nailed another nail in the coffin which is being built by radical anti-Christians and militant homosexualists to bury religious freedom altogether.  In ruling that religious freedom can be trumped by the homosexualist agenda these legal bright sparks have created another precedent which can (and will) be used to discriminate and persecute orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims and members of other religions. 

Notice as you read: the couple were judged unfit to foster because they will not promote the homosexualist agenda. 

So have we passed the point of no return?  Reflecting on this I wonder if we can turn back, or has our society gone so far that we just have to go, once more, into the abyss?   The Scottish philosopher Alasdair McIntyre wrote in his work After Virtue that it seems we are going into the Dark Ages - perhaps we are.  Whatever is going to happen may just have to play itself out and we believers must, once again, hold fast to our faith, embrace martyrdom (in whatever form it takes, most likely bloodless now) and pray, knowing all the time that Christ is the Lord of history, and the victory is already his.  And it will fall to us to rebuild civilisation once again.

Well, I suppose, we just have to start planning the rebuilding project.  We will have to include a lot of counselling in the plans because after these judges and their pals are finished with the up and coming generation, there are going to be a lot of mixed up, hurt, abused and empty people who will not know whether they are coming or going never mind right from wrong.