Catholics Look With Wary Eye Toward Parliament In Church of England Female Bishops Controversy

That is defiantly the tone I am sensing from a good many Catholics across the ocean. You can can kind of grasp that in this Catholic Herald article Parliament should beware taking a People’s Republic of China approach to women bishops. From the last paragraphs:



But what really worries me is the presumption that our secular government has a religious role to play, and the presumption that exemption from “equality legislation” is a privilege conferred on religious groups by government. Actually, it is not. In this country, and in every liberal democracy, it is the rights of conscience that are above all other rights – Parliament itself is subordinate to my conscience and should recognise that.




There is an amusing picture going round Facebook at present, of an English politician, the most high ranking of his day, who refused to get with the programme – Sir Thomas More. He paid the price. But it was a price worth paying. Erastianism, the doctrine that the state should control the Church, always was a heresy, and now is a heresy that has passed its sell-by date by several centuries. Its only adherents in the world seem to be people like Yvette Cooper, and of course the government of the People’s Republic of China, who refuse the Pope his right, which we believe to be given by God, to appoint bishops in his own Church. This behaviour by the People’s Republic is just one of the aspects of their unpleasant tyranny. British parliamentarians should beware going down the same path.



I never thought I would say this, but we all need to respect the integrity of the General Synod, and we all need to respect its decisions, carried out as they are in a transparent way according to rules that the Synod (and Parliament!) agreed on.

I keep seeing the equalities act mentioned by a quite a few Catholic blogs and other social media. In other words if certain politicos get their way as to this Church of England matter where does it stop. As one person I saw commented lets hope Catholics in the British Isles don't have to return to the practice of having their Priests educated overseas again.