Anglican Mainstream

By David Hughes, Telegraph

The Obama administration’s decision to take on the Catholic Church at this stage of the political cycle is either very brave or very stupid. As Jon Swaine reports this morning, the President’s overhaul of healthcare includes a provision that religious charities, universities and other groups must now provide contraception in staff insurance packages and failure to do so will result in hefty fines. More than 150 Catholic bishops have spoken out against the change, with one accusing Obama of waging a "severe assault on religious liberty". According to Alexander Sample, the Bishop of Marquette, "we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so.” With 70 million Catholics in the United States, this looks like a kamikaze mission by the White House. Why have they done it? David Brooks in the New York Times has a persuasive theory:

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By Dale O'Leary

By Patrick Wintour, Guardian

Government uses rare parliamentary procedure to annul seven adjustments to reform and prevent further challenges from peers

 The coalition has raised the stakes over its welfare bill by overturning seven key Lords amendments passed to soften the reforms, and taken the rare step to direct peers they have no constitutional right to challenge the Commons' decisions further.

On most bills, the Lords can send amendments back and forth in what is known as parliamentary ping pong. The coalition, deploying a rarely used parliamentary device, claimed "financial privilege" asserting that only the Commons had the right to make decisions on bills that have large financial implications.

It argued that the Lords amendments collectively cut billions of planned savings. A similar tactic could also be used to throw out likely Lords amendments to the legal aid and health bills.

It is for the Speaker on the advice of clerks and the coalition to decide if financial privilege should be applied.

MPs backed the government's plans for a £26,000 annual cap on overall household benefits including child benefit, overturning a defeat in the Lords. The Lords amendment, which was led by Church of England bishops, was overturned by 334 votes to 251.

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From BRIN

By John Smeaton, SPUC

Dr John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, (pictured) has told David Cameron, the prime minister, not to legalize gay marriage*. He said (in an interview in the Telegraph yesterday):

“Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman … I don’t think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can’t just [change it] overnight, no matter how powerful you are … We’ve seen dictators do it in different contexts and I don’t want to redefine very clear social structures that have been in existence for a long time and then overnight the state believes it could go in a particular way … "

Dr Sentamu rightly alludes to the actions of "dictators" when referring to David Cameron's plans, for the following reasons:

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By Andrew Carey, CEN

Church of England bishops this week have placed themselves in a difficult position. By leading opposition to the benefits cap of £26,000 they’ve taken a highly divisive position. They risk alienating churchgoers and stand accused of interfering in party politics. It is all very well to hark back to the days when the Church of England was regarded as a more effective opposition than the Labour Party to Margaret Thatcher’s far more modest reforms and cuts.

With news that Britain’s debt stands at one trillion pounds, albeit with public spending beginning to come under control, it is clear that there is much more pain to come for all of us. The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, John Packer, was wrong in tabling this amendment in the first place. It is not just that I disagree with him. A clear case can be made for the fact that the medium- and long-term effect of these changes will be to bring inflationary housing rents down and that the pain felt by some families will be temporary. Yet in reforming welfare, the government also needs to demonstrate to the long-term unemployed that work pays better than benefits.

We do no favours to some families, trapped in welfare dependency, by pretending that living on the dole can be a way of life. It is simply an unsustainable position both for these families and workers who must sometimes wonder whether work really pays.

Bishop Packer was wrong to table this amendment because he has crossed a line from warning about the possible consequences of government policy to interfering in the political process. I do not believe that this is the role of Bishops. The fact is that when they cross this line, they become political leaders, rather than moral leaders.

The onus is now on Bishop Packer to make an economic and social policy argument about where he believes welfare savings can be found and how reform can be accomplished.

Let me add that I do not believe the five bishops in the House of Lords on Monday evening were wrong to vote against the government nor to make a moral argument that children will be the first to suffer from the benefits cap. It is in the active step of opposition by tabling an amendment that Bishop Packer has stepped across the line.

From The Christian Institute

A senior Roman Catholic has challenged the Home Secretary about the Government’s plans to redefine marriage.

Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark noted that civil partnerships already offer same-sex couples virtually all the rights of marriage.

He pointed out that when he met with Home Secretary Theresa May earlier this week she seemed unable to say why marriage should be redefined in light of that.
 
He said: “I suspect the Government hasn’t really thought out why the definition of marriage should be changed.”

The Government will launch a consultation about redefining marriage in the spring.

Archbishop Smith met Mrs May alongside William Fittal, secretary general of the Church of England.

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By The Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester, Telegraph

Though he ceased to be Archbishop of Canterbury nearly a decade ago, Lord Carey, as a life peer, is entitled to express his opinions on issues of national importance.
 
But the point of debate in Parliament is that we listen to each others views before making up our minds.
 
Many Peers last Monday were persuaded to support the Bishops’ amendment by the power of the arguments they heard.
 
This makes it all the more disappointing to me that Lord Carey was not present to hear them.
 
Yet much of what Lord Carey had to say this week accords with the views of the Bishops.

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By Mark Greaves, Catholic Herald

Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark met the Home Secretary Theresa May yesterday to talk about the Government’s plans to introduce same-sex marriage.

The archbishop told The Catholic Herald that he wanted to clarify why the Government believed such legislation was needed.

He said he could not see the point of it given that civil partnerships already offer broadly the same legal rights as marriage.

But during their 40-minute meeting, he said, Mrs May seemed unable to answer that question. “I suspect the Government hasn’t really thought out why the definition of marriage should be changed,” he said.

He said that a steering committee of the bishops’ conference was to meet on Wednesday to plan how to campaign against the Government’s plans.

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By Tobin Grant, Christianity Today

Newt Gingrich won the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina with the strong support of evangelicals. According to exit polls, two-thirds of voters described themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians, 44 percent of which voted Gingrich. Their support turned the first Southern primary from a close race to a runaway victory for Gingrich.

[...]  Gingrich won, in part, because he was able to win over both religious conservatives and those for whom religion is less important in the voting booth. Voters who said the religious beliefs of candidates mattered “a great deal” backed both Gingrich (45 percent) and Santorum (32 percent).

From BBC News

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has accused bishops who oppose plans for welfare changes of failing to show concern for ordinary people.

He said they should think of those who pay taxes while some unemployed people live in large houses at public expense.

Bishops are leading opposition to the reforms in the House of Lords.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Duncan Smith admitted his plans for a £26,000 household benefit cap could face defeat in the Lords on Monday.

He said the bishops were not doing poorer people any favours.

He said: "The question I'd ask these bishops is, over all these years, why have they sat back and watched people being placed in houses they cannot afford? It's not a kindness.

"I would like to see their concerns about ordinary people, who are working hard, paying their tax and commuting long hours, who don't have as much money as they would otherwise because they're paying tax for all of this. Where is the bishops' concern for them?"

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By Wendy Wright, LifeSite News

The citizens of several countries are pushing back against President Obama’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender foreign policy imperative. Leaders in El Salvador launched a website on “Obama’s Corrupting Foreign Policy” and are asking the U.S. Senate to reject Obama’s nominee for ambassador to their country.

President Obama announced in December that the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) behavior is a top foreign policy priority, even for the U.S. military overseas. At the same time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a high-profile speech at the UN equating LGBT status with religion. The State Department told oambassadors worldwide to recognize “gay pride month,” and it released a list of “accomplishments” including the fact that a U.S. ambassador had published an OpEd promoting the LGBT agenda on behalf of the United States .

Mari Carmen Aponte, a temporary ambassador to El Salvador, published an essay conflating disapproval of homosexuality with “brutal hostility” and “aggression” by “those who promote hatred.” It is Salvadorans’ “responsibility” to become advocates for LGBT issues and “to inform our neighbors and friends about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” she wrote. The OpEd ran in a major Salvadoran newspaper in June, igniting a firestorm by offended citizens.

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From The Christian Institute

Labour’s Roy Hattersley has criticised his own party’s ‘shameful’ gambling legislation, introduced when Labour were in Government, as Britain’s biggest casino opens.

The new casino is open 24-hours a day, seven days a week, in East London.

Lord Hattersley criticised the casino for portraying itself as simply another form of family entertainment and he highlighted some of the “battle-hardened gamblers” who were at the venue.
 
Labour’s 2005 Gambling Act, which came into force in 2007, ushered in a comprehensive deregulation of gambling, including allowing advertising and online betting for the first time.

Lord Hattersley, who held a Labour seat in Birmingham for over 30 years, commented: “Gambling corrupts. And there is no reason to believe that most of the British public want it to spread like a plague through our towns and cities.”

And he warned that “nurturing the ‘something for nothing’ culture that lies at the heart of gambling” was helping to create “a worryingly detrimental effect on this country”.

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By Andrew Carey, CEN

It used to be said that the church shouldn’t stick its nose into politics. It seems to be accepted now that there is a legitimate role for church leaders to make political noises, though it is still thankfully off-limits to make party-political interventions.

The interesting thing is that it is now more usual for politicians, and indeed courts, to interfere with theology. I have a book coming out in February that looks at this phenomenon (We Don’t Do God by George Carey and Andrew Carey, Monarch). My view is that at a time when the doctrines of Christianity have less influence than ever before, secular doctrines are now being imposed upon us all.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant argued in The Independent on Monday that the Church’s attitude to homosexuality is simply absurd and should be abandoned (Chris Bryant: The Church of England needs to forget its silliness about homosexuality’, 14 October 2012).

The church’s teaching, he argued, “condemns people to a life without the joy of sexual intimacy – and all to placate a theology that is as misplaced and out of date as Christianity’s one-time advocacy of slavery. “Is it too much to hope that one day the Church of England will get this silliness out of its system,” he concluded.

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By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

The Republican Party’s remaining presidential hopefuls gave a fiery and rousing performance at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center Monday night that featured a first of the debate season: a standing ovation for a participant’s answer.

In the heavily evangelical state, the issues of religious freedom, family, abstinence education, and the rights of the unborn provided many of the forum’s highlights.

Reviving the theme of a prominent television ad, former Texas Governor Rick Perry stated, “This administration is at war against organized religion.” He said, “Catholic Charities cannot take money [from] the federal government…because this administration doesn’t agree with the Catholic Church on the issue of abortion.”

In September, the Obama administration denied millions of dollars in federal grants to the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, because its top-rated program to assist victims of sexual trafficking will not refer women for an abortion. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on the issue in December.

Perry also slammed the administration for “going after churches” when it asked the Supreme Court to reject the “ministerial exception,” which allows religious organizations like Christian schools to appoint their own ministers. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the administration’s argument last week.

“If that’s not a war on religion, I don’t know what it is,” Perry said to thunderous applause. “And this administration is out of control.”

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By Andrew Grice, The Independent

Nick Clegg has pledged the Government will not backslide on its promise to legalise gay marriage despite a revolt by Conservative MPs who oppose the plan.

The Deputy Prime Minister told the Tory rebels that they were wrong to claim that bringing in civil marriage for gays and lesbians would weaken the institution of marriage and said the reform would be driven through Parliament.

Mr Clegg spoke out yesterday after The Independent revealed traditionalist Tory MPs are plotting to derail the proposal in the Commons. Tory insiders believe 100 MPs could oppose it.

The Liberal Democrat leader insisted: "There is absolutely no question of the Coalition Government abandoning our commitment to legalise gay marriage. I wholeheartedly reject the idea that making civil marriage open to same-sex couples somehow devalues the institution of marriage. I would argue the opposite – it makes it stronger." He said Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem Equalities Minister, had been driving this agenda and would launch a consultation exercise in March.

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By Hilary White, LifeSite News

By Philip Booth, Conservative Home

Professor Philip Booth is the Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Today the Institute of Economic Affairs have published a new study “…and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of Government”.

[...]  Happiness is also linked with happy marriages, religious belief, employment and economic freedom. This is troubling for the left, though perhaps not quite as troubling for the well-being proponents in the Conservative Party. Should the state promote religious belief? I don’t see well-being proponent Polly Toynbee suggesting that it should any time soon. We do not need well-being economics to tell us that it would be a good idea for the state to stop discriminating against marriage in the tax and benefit system and one half of the coalition does seem to recognise this. David Cameron should, however, reconsider his well-being at work agenda being promoted through policies of promoting more employment rights, parental leave and compulsory holidays. Our study shows that there is little evidence that such policies improve the well-being of the employed. However, if they raise the costs of employment and lead to higher unemployment, these policies will significantly reduce well-being overall.

And this really leads us to the main point. The Government does not need to collect well-being statistics in order to try to educate, exhort and lead society (in the Prime Minister’s own words) in the direction of greater happiness. The Government should do less, not more. Greater freedom from government actually increases happiness in its own right. The side effects of greater freedom from government (more employment, higher incomes and the dismantling of welfare systems that discriminate against work and family) also lead in the direction of greater happiness. In other words, government should not try to make us happy, it should allow us to pursue happiness. It should reverse the half-baked policies of collecting data on how happy we all are and get back to an agenda that ensures that we are free – individually, as families and in broader social networks – to pursue happiness.

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By Kathleen Gilbert, LifeSite News

Although eager to point out “bigotry” by Christians who do not embrace gay rights, the media is strangely quiet about the increasing discrimination against Christians, according to Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich delivered the remarks during a GOP presidential candidate debate in Manchester earlier this week, noting that the one-sidedness of the “bigotry” question demonstrates serious bias in the mainstream media.

“You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done?” Gingrich asked. “Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry?”

“Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration in key delivery of services because of the bias and bigotry of the administration?” he asked, referencing the Obama administration’s unprecedented denial of a health care grant to the U.S. Bishops over their pro-life stance.

“The bigotry question goes both ways and there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side, and none of it gets covered by the media,” he concluded to applause.

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From NOM

NBC, not to be left out of the mainstream media effort to equate protecting marriage with bigoted views, goes after Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum for their views on marriage. Both men handle the line of attack easily. The last jab at Santorum, asking him what he would do if one of his sons were to come out to him as gay, well – see for yourself.