Bishop O'Donoghue, and the director of children's services at the Catholic Caring Services in his diocese of Lancaster, Jim Cullen, appeared on Radio 4's Today programme today. They discussed the response of the Catholic Church to equalities legislation. For the rest of today an audio clip of the package can be found here. The full progamme (I think you would have to search through to find the relevant few minutes) should be available on the "listen again" function for the coming week.
Jim Cullen gave a couple of interesting indications about the work of the Catholic Caring Services. When asked about how the work of the CCS had changed in response to the legislation, his response was that there had been no changes made to comply with the legislation. This was because the charity was already non-discriminatory at the point at which people accessed its services. Talking about a situation where a gay or lesbian couple might approach the charity seeking assessment for adoption, Jim Cullen's response was that a same sex couple approaching the charity in order to make a political point would be treated in exactly the same way as a married couple who wished to adopt a child in order to solve problems in their marriage - and, I assume here, that this is a situation where the charity/good practice would decline to recommend the couple as adoptive parents. He also commented on a scenario where a same sex couple, two women, had fostered a child, maintained good contact with the birth family and had a good relationship with their fostered child. The couple then sought to adopt the child in order to maintain the good and positive bond they had established with the child and to avoid it being severed. Jim Cullen's observation was that, in this situation, "what Christian would break that bond" between the fostering couple and the child? I found this interesting for what it revealed about the way in which Catholic Caring Services are already operating. The position of Catholic Caring Services is that complying with the law will enable the charity to preserve the whole range of its work, which goes beyond adoption services.
Bishop O'Donoghue highlighted his wish to see a legal challenge to the equalities legislation that has led to this present situation. He also referred to his setting up of a support service, funded from the diocesan collections that would previously have gone to Catholic Caring Services, in order to meet his concern for the young people who might be adversely affected by his policy on this issue. He described the position being presented by Jim Cullen as "naive". He gave a clear account of the Catholic view that male and female are complementary in the marriage relationship. Bishop O'Donoghue did well in presenting himself as concerned and caring towards children; he could have presented more explicitly the position expressed in his most recent letter about Catholic Caring Services, viz, the view that it is in the best interests of children to be placed with a married male/female couple.
Jim Cullen offered a concluding observation that he recognised the role of Bishop O'Donoghue as a teacher of Catholic faith, but that his role was different. His role was to preserve the work of the charity, and that was what he was doing. This sounds very reasonable, but the question that it fails to address is that the charity, as a Catholic charity, can be expected to work in accordance with Catholic teaching. This does not permit the readiness of separation between the teaching of the Church and the practice of a Catholic charity that is an unwritten assumption of Jim Cullen's observation.
On the one hand, we are no longer in the days when a Bishop can dictate the activity of his lay collaborators - a quite unhealthy clericalism is possible in that sort of situation - and so I think that there is a rightful expertise and autonomy that belongs to an organisation like Catholic Caring Services. However, it does not follow from this that a declaration of independence from Catholic teaching is appropriate either.
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Perhaps it is helpful to you to work out, in this careful but public way, your views on controversial issues, and to invite debate. We do all struggle for a sense of what is right, and for some of us it remains important to take the Church's views into account. Sometimes, however, absolutes have to be left to God, and maybe at times it is the church's role humbly to hold the opposing tensions of an argument openly. It is not us who are omnipotent or holders of all the wisdom. Sometimes we have to tolerate that as humans we occupy the position of not being able to discern everything that is right.
Jim Cullen says that Bishop Patrick's task is to be the 'moral leader' in Lancaster while his own (Cullen's) task is to look out for the charity.
Cullen either thinks morality is opposed to children's welfare, or else he is admitting that his own priority is an institution (the charity) rather than what is true, right, from God and therefore best for the children AND all the adults concerned.
Bishop Patrick is protecting children. Jim Cullen's charity is selling out the vulnerable.
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