Britain’s senior Roman Catholic leader used his New Year message to praise marriage and deliver an implicit attack on the Government’s gay equality laws.
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Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Church in England and Wales, said most parents did not want their children to be taught that marriage was just “one lifestyle choice among many”.
The cardinal said the traditional family remained central to the well-being of society but was being dangerously eroded.
While society was slowly waking up to the dangers of climate change and pollution for the planet, it was still destroying the family, he said.
“It has taken us a long time to realise that if we cut down trees, use cars with highly leaded fuels and build factories with toxic emissions, we were gradually destroying the ecosystem within which we live and breathe.
“Perhaps, however, it has been harder for us to admit those elements in our relationships or in our society which have contributed to the fragmentation of the family.
“Yet it is equally true that we are rapidly moving the very structures on which society is built and on which humanity depends; we are gradually destroying the ‘ecosystem’ that supports the family.”
The cardinal said he was aware that many people had suffered broken marriages or were “courageous” single parents and he understood their sorrow and hurt.
However, he emphasised the Catholic Church’s commitment to the home as the focus of family life and the centrality of Christian marriage.
“Most parents do not want their children to be taught that marriage is no more than one lifestyle choice among many,” he said.
“They do not want to expose their children to the risk of becoming promiscuous or indulging in drug and alcohol abuse.
“Many, many young people, when expressing their dreams and hopes, express the desire to one day be happily married and to have a family.”
The cardinal’s comments follow a series of clashes between the Catholic Church and the Government over the introduction of gay equality legislation and civil partnerships.
Some Catholics have even questioned the Cardinal’s role in the recent conversion of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, who was instrumental in pushing through many of the reforms.
In his message, the cardinal urged parents to bring God into their homes so that their children would carry Christian values into the next generation.
“Our children are the messages we send to tomorrow,” he said.
“We can forget easily what is said in church, or even in school, but we don’t forget what happens in the home.
“Somehow, if we take God’s Word into our daily life and try to live it, then we are scattering the seed ourselves for the younger generation and generations to come.”
Source: telegraph.co.uk
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gay News from GXR News
