Photonews
At 7.40am on 18th September, some very excited members of the Union of Catholic Mothers arrived at Francis Street, Victoria, writes Margaret McDonald, President of the Liverpool Union of Catholic Mothers. After going through various security checks we finally entered Westminster Cathedral. The sound of the youth gathering outside on the piazza filtered in, the laughter and singing all added to the atmosphere.
The members of the congregation came from all walks of life, every parish and every diocese in the country and we formed one body and were united in our faith.
Around 9.45am the procession of celebrants arrived moving like a red carpet in their red vestments. Then came an air of expectancy and anticipation, even the youth outside were silent, it was if the Cathedral was holding its’ breath.
Suddenly the cymbals clashed, drums rolled and trumpets sounded the music resounding around the walls of the church, heralding the entrance of the Holy Father. This was the moment we had all been waiting for. The celebration of the Mass had begun.
The members of the congregation came from all walks of life, every parish and every diocese in the country and we formed one body and were united in our faith.
Around 9.45am the procession of celebrants arrived moving like a red carpet in their red vestments. Then came an air of expectancy and anticipation, even the youth outside were silent, it was if the Cathedral was holding its’ breath.
Suddenly the cymbals clashed, drums rolled and trumpets sounded the music resounding around the walls of the church, heralding the entrance of the Holy Father. This was the moment we had all been waiting for. The celebration of the Mass had begun.
During the Eucharist prayer, which was being said in Latin, I noticed that where normally the celebrant says ‘we pray for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict’, the Holy Father said: 'we offer them for me your unworthy servant whom you have placed over your church’.
At the end of Mass to rapturous applause the Holy Father made his way slowly up the aisle towards the West Door blessing us as he passed by. The doors opened and a great roar went up from the youth they greeted him with cheers and chanting 'Papa Benedicta', it was very emotional to hear them. Their warmth and pleasure at seeing him was obvious to all that saw them.
This article has been difficult to put together, because no words can properly describe the feeling, the aura or the atmosphere of being present at the Papal Mass. I asked the members of our group for their feelings and this is what they said:
There was such a feeling of strength and support. How alive we all felt. Just to be there was a joy, great charisma and feeling. To be in his presence was wonderful. Westminster Cathedral was alive with our Catholic faith when Pope Benedict arrived it was like all heaven was joining us. Encouraging hearing the excitement and enthusiasm of the youth especially that speech of thanks given by their representative.
To round this item off I would like to say we all felt privileged and humble to be able to share in the Papal Mass, it has strengthened all our faith and it is a day that we will never ever forget.
At the end of Mass to rapturous applause the Holy Father made his way slowly up the aisle towards the West Door blessing us as he passed by. The doors opened and a great roar went up from the youth they greeted him with cheers and chanting 'Papa Benedicta', it was very emotional to hear them. Their warmth and pleasure at seeing him was obvious to all that saw them.
This article has been difficult to put together, because no words can properly describe the feeling, the aura or the atmosphere of being present at the Papal Mass. I asked the members of our group for their feelings and this is what they said:
There was such a feeling of strength and support. How alive we all felt. Just to be there was a joy, great charisma and feeling. To be in his presence was wonderful. Westminster Cathedral was alive with our Catholic faith when Pope Benedict arrived it was like all heaven was joining us. Encouraging hearing the excitement and enthusiasm of the youth especially that speech of thanks given by their representative.
To round this item off I would like to say we all felt privileged and humble to be able to share in the Papal Mass, it has strengthened all our faith and it is a day that we will never ever forget.
The last remaining Catholic adoption agency in England and Wales has renewed its battle to stay open.
Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam, wants to continue its policy of assessing only married heterosexuals and single people as potential adopters and foster parents.
The Charity Commission has twice rejected its applications to change its statutes to allow this on the grounds that such a policy was unjustly discriminatory towards homosexual couples and in breach of both European and British equality and human rights laws.
But lawyers acting for the agency have challenged the legality of the Commission’s position, saying its interpretation of the law was simply “wrong”.
They have lodged an appeal against the Commission’s decision and have also accused Commissioners of effectively ignoring a ruling in favour of the agency by a High Court judge in March.
The appeal will focus primarily on whether the Commission was correct in dismissing the arguments of Mr Justice Michael Briggs when he supported the agency’s application.
Sir Michael had also been severely critical of the regulator’s stance, describing it as “neither logical, rational, purposive nor responsive to any reasonable linguistic interpretation”. He ordered the Commission to reconsider its position and to pay the costs of the case.
Benjamin James of London-based Bircham Dyson Bell Solicitors, representing the agency, said the Commission was wrong to reject the application of Catholic Care in the light of Sir Michael’s ruling.
“The Commission was wrong in its decision,” he said. “The Charity Tribunal will request that the Charity Commission responds within 28 days. Once the Commission has responded there will be a directions hearing deciding how the case will be managed.
“The actual appeal is on whether the Charity Commission correctly interpreted Sir Michael’s judgment.”
Catholic Care is the only Catholic adoption agency of 11 in England and Wales to continue to fight through the courts regulations passed in 2007 to prohibit discrimination against gay people in the provision of goods and services. The other agencies have either broken from the Church or closed down.
Before the regulations went into effect last year the Catholic adoption agencies annually found new homes for about 250 children, many of them categorised as “difficult to place”. Catholic Care dealt with about 10 children a year.
In the last three years there has been just one recorded instance of a gay couple approaching a Catholic agency and the pair were referred elsewhere.
Lawyers for Catholic Care are arguing that Section 193 of the 2010 Equality Act, which incorporates the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs), allows limited discrimination in pursuit of charitable objectives.
The law, which came into force on Friday last week, says charities can discriminate if their actions represent a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim or for the purpose of preventing or compensating a disadvantage” linked to a charity’s characteristics.
Catholic Care understands this to mean that it can both comply with the law and operate according to Catholic teaching that gay adoption is “gravely immoral”.
But rejecting the agency’s application and the March ruling of the High Court, Andrew Hind, the chief executive of the Charity Commission, argued that such “discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances”.
He acknowledged that Catholic Care provided a “quality, high-value adoption service”, but he also said that he believed that the agency’s demise would not matter because the numbers of children it dealt with were small and that these could be placed with “prospective parents through other channels”.
“Discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is a serious matter because it departs from the principle of treating people with equal respect,” he said in his ruling published in August.
The position of the Commission has been vociferously supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and by gay and secularist groups.
Last month Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds was named as a candidate for “Bigot of the Year” by Stonewall, the campaigning gay rights organisation, for encouraging Catholic Care to fight the SORs through the courts.
His nomination came just days after Pope Benedict XVI alluded to the fate of the Catholic adoption agencies when, in a speech in Westminster Hall, he appealed to British politicians to permit the Church to serve the common good in accordance with its own teachings.
The Pope said that laws requiring “Christians to act against their conscience” were “worrying signs of failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square”.
An attempt to persuade Europe’s leading human rights organisation to fight to abolish the rights of doctors and nurses to conscientiously object to involvement in abortions yesterday ended in a humiliating defeat.
Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe not only roundly rejected a resolution to strip medical professionals of their rights to opt out of abortions but they also comprehensively rewrote the proposals so that they amounted to a defence of conscientious objection.
They even changed the name of the resolution from “Women’s Access to Lawful Medical Care: the Problem of Unregulated Conscientious Objection” to “The Right to Conscientious Objection in Lawful Medical Care”.
The 107 assembly members also rejected a recommendation for the 47-strong Committee of Ministers, which includes William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, to take action to tighten up European laws on conscientious objection.
In the face of the rout, Christine McCafferty, the British Socialist assembly member and the author of the resolution, ended up voting against the final version of her report.
Afterwards, the pro-life activists who had lobbied members to support dozens of wrecking amendments to the resolution were jubilant.
Dr Dan Boucher of CARE, a British Evangelical Christian charity, said: “The Council of Europe has done what the Council of Europe should do. It has stood against those who would like to play fast and loose with the important role played by conscience in our liberal democratic traditions which the Council exists to champion.
“We in Europe must cherish our Liberal Democratic traditions and the important role that conscience has played and continues to play in them,” he added. “A key constitutional freedom has today very properly been upheld.”
Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: “This evening witnessed an incredible victory for the right of staff in medical institutions to refuse to be complicit in the killing of unborn children and other unethical practices.”
Miss McCafferty, the former Labour MP for the Calder Valley who lost her seat at the last general election, had drafted her resolution partly in response to reports of rising numbers of European doctors refusing to be involved in abortions.
She claimed that women in such traditionally Roman Catholic countries as Austria are being forced to travel overseas to end their pregnancies because so many doctors will not perform abortions.
In the Lazio region of Italy, which covers Rome, an estimated 86 per cent of doctors now refuse to deal with abortions and in Britain Baroness Royall, the former Labour Health spokeswoman, has also admitted that more and more doctors are refusing to carry them out.
Miss McCafferty had argued, in her resolution, that “the unregulated use of conscientious objection disproportionately affects women, notably those on low incomes or living in rural areas”.
She wanted the Council to endorse her proposal for all doctors to direct women seeking an abortion to people who will provide the procedure rather than simply give them information or inform them of their right to see another doctor, which in Britain is current practice under General Medical Council guidelines.
The resolution would also have obliged doctors to provide abortions “despite his or her conscientious objection … when referral to another healthcare provider is not possible”.
She called for a register of doctors who had conscientious objections, a complaints mechanism for women who feel aggrieved by a refusal of a doctor to either grant an abortion or to perform the procedure directly.
She proposed that healthcare institutions – including hundreds of European hospitals run by the Catholic Church – should not be allowed to stop abortions from being performed on their premises.
But her reforming clauses were simply deleted during the debate.
In their place were inserted amendments which read, for instance, that “no person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion”.
Her resolution would have been non-binding, had it been passed, but it would have been used to exert powerful pressure on governments to tighten up laws on conscientious objection.
The Strasbourg-based Council was set up in 1949 to further European integration by harmonising human rights laws. It bases its work on the European Convention on Human Rights and it includes the European Court of Human Rights, to which Europeans can bring cases if they believe a member state has violated their rights.
Conscientious objection is recognised as a fundamental human right in international law whereas abortion is not. Members of the European Union retain their sovereign powers to decide their own policies.
Miss McCafferty’s resolution came just two years after the Council adopted a resolution calling for member states to recognise abortion as a universal human right, and to grant women unrestricted access to the procedure.
Her resolution was supported by such groups as the European Humanist Federation, the European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics and the UK-based Secular Medical Forum and the National Secular Society.
It was widely expected that it would be adopted until most members decided to back the amendments tabled mostly by Ronan Mullen, the Irish senator, and Luca Volonte, an assembly member from Italy.
The amended resolution was adopted by 56 votes to 51 votes and the recommendations to the Committee of Ministers were defeated by 56 votes to 51 votes.
