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FR AIDAN NICHOLS’S PLAN FOR SAVING CATHOLIC EDUCATION FROM SECULARISATION P12

No. 6444

www.catholicherald.co.uk

February 26 2010 £1.20 (Republic of Ireland €1.70)

Ed Balls: Catholic schools must teach pupils where they can access abortion

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN AND ED WEST

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS must teach pupils where to access an abortion, Schools Secretary Ed Balls has said.

Mr Balls was speaking hours before a crucial vote on a Bill that would introduce sex and relationships education for children as young as five and forbid parents from removing their children from sex education classes once they turned 15.

The Bill, which was passed by 268 votes to 177 and now goes to the House of Lords, is strongly supported by the Catholic Education Service (CES), which last week hailed an amendment to the Bill that it said it had secured after “extensive lobbying”.

The BBC described the CES as having “gone to ground” before the debate but it re-emerged on Wednesday morning with a statement claiming that the Bill safeguarded the rights of Catholic schools.

The CES said: “The governing bodies and head teachers of voluntary aided schools are required to conduct their schools in accordance with their Instrument of Government and the Trust Deed under which they operate. The provisions of the amendment will enable schools with a religious character to fulfil these requirements in the teaching of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Education, which includes Sex and Relationships Education (SRE).

“The teaching of all aspects of the curriculum in Catholic schools reflects their religious ethos. In the same way, the SRE in Catholic schools will be rooted in the Catholic Church’s teaching of the profound respect for the dignity of all human persons.”

But the statement did not directly address the question of whether Catholic schools will be forced to teach girls where to obtain an abortion.

Fr Tim Finigan, a parish priest and blogger in Blackfen, Kent, said: “Catholic schools cannot give information about how to access the local abortion clinic since this would be formal co-operation in a grave evil.”

The controversy over the sex education Bill was reignited last Friday when the Department for Children, Schools and Families

Schools Secretary Ed Balls insists that schools with a religious character must inform pupils ‘how to access an abortion’

(DCSF) issued a press release responding to secular lobby groups that were critical of the amendment obtained by the CES.

The statement explained that from September 2011 schools with a religious character will no longer be able to opt out of statutory PSHE and SRE lessons. It used the example of St Thomas More, a Catholic secondary school in Bedford, to illustrate how the new provisions would work. The DCSF claimed that the school taught pupils about various “pregnancy options, including abortion” in a

“non-judgmental way” as well as “the spectrum of pro- and antichoice views”.

The school issued a statement on Tuesday saying its lessons were underpinned by Church teaching on the sanctity of human life.

It said: “As an outstanding Catholic school, the teachers at St Thomas More deliver high-quality SRE which is reflective of the school’s Catholic ethos ... placing such information in the context of the Catholic faith. The school follows the Edexcel RE GCSE course, but the teaching takes place resting on the profound respect found in the Catholic faith for the sanctity of all human life.”

On Tuesday morning Ed Balls gave an interview to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in which he again insisted that the amendment did not “water down” the Bill.

He said: “If you are currently a Catholic school... you could choose to teach only to children that contraception is wrong, homosexuality is wrong. That changes radically with this Bill.

“A Catholic faith school can say to their pupils: ‘We believe as a religion contraception is wrong.’ But what they can’t do is therefore say that they are not going to teach contraception to children, how to access contraception, or how to use contraception. What this changes is that for the first time these schools cannot just ignore these issues or teach only one side of the argument.

“They also have to teach that there are different views on homosexuality. They cannot teach homophobia. They must explain civil partnerships. They must give a balanced view on abortion. They must

PA Photo give both sides of the argument. They must explain how to access an abortion. The same is true on contraception as well.”

He added: “To have the support of the Catholic Church and Archbishop Nichol [sic] in these changes is, I think, very, very important, is a huge step forward.”

The interview sparked outrage among Catholics opposed to the Bill. Antonia Tully, a mother of six school-age children and coordinator of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’s Safe at School campaign, said: “We beg

Archbishop Nichols and other religious leaders to back parents, whether Catholic or of other faiths, who refuse to allow their children to be subjected to what the Government Bill demands.

“Archbishop Nichols must say whether schools should do what Ed Balls demands: tell their children how to access abortion and where to get and how to use contraception. Or will the Archbishop tell schools to resist – even though they may risk legal action, losing Ofsted accreditation or even losing hard-won state funding?”

John Bowers QC, a leading employment barrister, said the Bill would result in a “radical appropriation of power by central government, enabling them to dictate teaching on a matter over which many parents have strongly held moral or religious convictions”.

Meanwhile, the leading Dominican theologian Fr Aidan Nichols has called for a “radical” reduction in the number of Catholic schools in the state sector. Writing in The Catholic Herald this week, he argues that the Church cannot currently ensure the Catholicity of all its schools.

“My suggestion therefore is this,” he writes, “ought we not, for the sake of making the best use of our resources, radically to reduce the number of our schools in the state sector so as to concentrate on deepening the Catholicity of a realistic number, rather than seeing, as at present, the Catholicity of the total number ever more attenuated?”

On Wednesday, Ed Balls admitted that the Government was likely to miss its target of reducing teenage pregnancy by 50 per cent compared to 1998 figures by 2010.

He said: “It was a really ambitious target – it was a 50 per cent fall. I think it was right to set an ambitious target and it is going to be really hard to make that amount of fall.”

But he added that the latest figures out this week would show “the lowest rate of teenage pregnancies for well over a decade”.

He said there had been a 10 per cent fall in conceptions and a 20 per cent fall in births.

“This has been really successful,” he said. “But it is not enough. I’m still worried about it and there is a lot more to do.”

Fr Aidan Nichols: Page 12 Editorial comment: Page 13

Government is attacking ‘family values’, says Cardinal O’Brien

BY ANNA ARCO

CARDINAL Keith O’Brien has accused the Government of waging “a systematic and unrelenting attack on family values”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the Government had consistently ignored the concerns of the Church, in one of the fiercest attacks on Labour officials by a senior Church leader. His comments came after Scotland Minister Jim Murphy claimed that Christianity had given the Labour Party “much of its intellectual legitimacy to challenge the vested interests of the old order”.

Cardinal O’Brien said: “Any recognition of the role played by faith and religion in society is to be welcomed. However, a tangible example by the Government over the last decade that it acknowledged or endorsed religious values would also have been welcomed.

“Instead we have witnessed this Government undertake a systematic and unrelenting attack on family values. This is a charge I personally put to Gordon Brown when we met in 2008 and I have seen no evidence since then to suggest anything has changed.

“When introducing legislation to permit experimentation on and destruction of human embryos the objections of the Church and other faiths were ignored. When introducing legislation to permit civil partnerships and same-sex adoption the objections of the Church and other faiths were ignored. In refusing to tackle the soaring toll of abortions, the views of the Church and other faiths were ignored.

“Most recently in advancing legislation which would completely and permanently undermine religious freedom this Government has taken no note whatsoever of the concerns of people of faith.”

Vatican Observatory launches iPhone app

Kay Burley makes Ash Wednesday gaffe

BY MARK GREAVES

THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY is launching its own iPhone app, it emerged this week.

The app – or application – will consist of daily and weekly devotional material in video and audio format. It will be delivered by Fr Michael Manning, an American author and television presenter.

The iPhone app business has boomed in the last couple of years and there are now tens of thousands of apps available from the iPhone app store. An Apple advertisement proclaims: “There’s an app for just about anything.”

The Observatory app will certainly not be the first Catholic app on the market. There are already breviary, Missal and rosary apps, as well as apps for saints, for the liturgical calendar and for the works of St Augustine.

The Vatican app comes after an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI for priests to use the internet to spread the Gospel.

BY MARK GREAVES

SKY NEWS presenter Kay Burley joked last week that US Vice President Joe Biden must have walked into a door after mistaking the ashes on his forehead for a bruise.

The presenter, who was raised a Catholic, later apologised for the gaffe on Ash Wednesday.

She said: “What’s happened to his head? I’m sure that’s what everyone’s asking at home. It looks like he’s walked into a door.”

When the Sky News US

correspondent Greg Milam suggested he may have slipped on some ice while at the Winter Olympics in Canada, she gamely replied: “He’s probably been having a go on those tea trays down the luge or something.”

Later, when informed of her error, she said: “I know I’m a very bad Catholic.”

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