Fr. Z's Blog

Pres. Obama, The First Gay President, is not the only one undermining our first freedoms.

We have been keeping an eye His Excellency Most Rev. Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury (south of the River Mersey next to Liverpool, the southern parts of Greater Manchester, parts of Derbyshire, almost all of the county of Cheshire and all of Shropshire).

Here is a Press Release from the Diocese of Shrewsbury

Sunday 3rd June 2012

Embargoed for internet use until 00.01am on Monday 4th June 2012

‘The future of humanity passes by way of the family’

The Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, has made a robust defence of the traditional definition of marriage and has urged politicians to protect the institution rather than undermine it.

Directly addressing the remarks of Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, about the justifiable concerns of Christians, the Bishop explained that the Coalition Government’s proposals to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples did not just create new fears about religious liberty but about the well-being of society in general.

Bishop Davies said in a homily during the National Association of Catholic Families annual pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine at Walsingham, Norfolk, on Monday June 4 that politicians who pay lip service to the value of the family urgently needed to act in concrete terms to ensure its protection from attacks against marriage, which, he reminded the congregation, lies at the very foundation of the family.

Bishop Davies said: “The Deputy Prime Minister was recently reported as saying he could not understand why Christians and other people of faith saw a legal redefinition of marriage as a matter of conscience: it would not, he claimed, impinge on religious freedoms. [HAH!  Just wait a few days.  They’ll throw priests in jail for refusing to do same-sex “weddings” in Catholic churches.] Experience, of course, might make us cautious of such assurances, even those given by a Deputy Prime Minister, that this agenda will not threaten religious freedom.

“However, our concern is not only with religious freedom but also the enormous good which marriage represents as foundational to family-life. Today we see a government, without mandate, disposing of any credible consultation, seeking to impose one of the greatest acts of ‘social engineering’ in our history in uprooting the legal definition of marriage. Marriage lies at the very foundation of the family.

“For all generations to come one generation of politicians sets out to demolish in the name of an ‘equality agenda’ the understanding of marriage that has served as the timeless foundation for the family. The Government is seeking to do this at the very moment when marriage as an institution has been more weakened than ever before. Yet it asks: why are people of faith concerned?”

Bishop Davies added: “So far from weakening and confusing the foundation of the family we invite our political leaders to give back to the institution of marriage and the family the recognition and confidence it deserves.”

For further information

Please contact Simon Caldwell, communications officer for the Diocese of Shrewsbury, on either 07730 526847 or at simon.caldwell@dioceseofshrewsbury.org

Website: www.dioceseofshrewsbury.org
Twitter: @ShrewsRCnews
Pictures of Bishop Davies are available at:

(Please credit: Mazur/CatholicChurch.org.uk)

Bishop Davies’s homily in full:

Homily for the National Association of Catholic Families

National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham

“The future of humanity passes by way of the family”

We gather during this celebration of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. We rejoice with many today not only in the Queen’s constitutional role carried out with unfailing dedication but also in her Christian witness of faith and prayer. However, it is significant that a family stands always at the centre of our constitution, at the heart of our national life. The Crown passes by way of a family! It was, of course, in this Norfolk countryside almost a millennium ago that a simple house was built to remind all generations of the centrality and holiness of the family revealed by God’s plan in the Holy Family of Nazareth. True, it was a monarch, King Henry VIII, not noted for his reverence for marriage, who saw both house and shrine destroyed four centuries ago. Yet Walsingham has now visibly returned in its Catholic and Anglican witness. Here we will always be reminded in Blessed John Paul II’s unforgettable words that, “the future of humanity passes by way of the family” (Familaris Consortio n. 86). It is a self-evident truth which too often is obscured in our consciousness today that the future of humanity, the future of society, depends on the family.

The Deputy Prime Minister was recently reported as saying he could not understand why Christians and other people of faith saw a legal redefinition of marriage as a matter of conscience: it would not he claimed impinge on religious freedoms. Experience, of course, might make us cautious of such assurances, even those given by a Deputy Prime Minister, that this agenda will not threaten religious freedom. However, our concern is not only with religious freedom but also with the enormous good which marriage represents as foundational to family-life. Today we see a government, without mandate, disposing of any credible consultation, seeking to impose one of the greatest acts of “social engineering” in our history by uprooting the legal definition of marriage. [That should sound familiar to US citizens.] Marriage lies at the very foundation of the family. For all generations to follow one generation of politicians is setting out to demolish in the name of an “equality agenda” the understanding of marriage that has served as the timeless foundation for the family. The government is seeking to do this at the very moment when marriage as an institution has been more weakened than ever before. Yet it asks: why are people of faith concerned?

One of England’s greatest and clearest thinkers the now Blessed John Henry Newman famously distinguished what he called “notional assent” from “real assent.” It seems that most people in public life give a notional assent to the value of the family as that first and vital cell of society – and never more so than in those moments of social disturbance such as the riots of last summer. However, what is needed is not just a notional agreement to the importance of family but a real assent to the place of the family in our society as securing the well-being of generations to come. This involves the recognition of what marriage uniquely is. A recognition comes not only from faith but from reason which clearly sees that it is from the family that “citizens come to birth and it is with within the family that they find the first school of the social virtues which are the animating principle of the existence and development of society itself” (Familaris Consortio n 42). In this way it is in the family that the future of society will be decided. So far from weakening and confusing the foundation of the family we invite our political leaders to give back to the institution of marriage and the family the recognition and confidence it deserves.

Here in Walsingham where across so many centuries of our history the sacredness of marriage and family were recognised in the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth, we wish to affirm in the words of Blessed John Paul II that “the Creator of all things has established marriage as the beginning and basis of human society” (Familaris Consortio 42)). May the gift of marriage and the family be held sacred by us all for the sake of every generation to come. Amen.

Do I hear an “Amen!”?

WDTPRS kudos to Bp. Davies.