Discovering unity in the trenches

By Paul Schratz

It's remarkable the types of issues that can bring faith communities together, especially during a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which we observed last week.

The week is a time when Christians can pray in particular that they may be one, just as Christ prayed for His followers on the night before He died.

If this is something the Lord willed, we can only expect it will come to pass, but it's anyone's guess how that will happen, given the widening gulf between the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations in key areas of faith and morals.

Progress is being made on several other fronts, however. For instance, the Church is engaged in constructive dialogue with the Orthodox Church, as well as with major denominations.

Then there's also the ecumenism of the trenches, where a confluence of events can bring different sides together in practical fellowship.

That's what's been happening with Evangelical communities. It's also happening in the case of the Church of England, which is coming to the defence of the Catholic Church over legislation in Britain that will ban any discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

The new Sexual Orientation Regulations, which take effect in April, are wide-ranging, with no exemption for churches and religious institutions. In the case at hand it would mean Britain's Catholic adoption agencies would not be allowed to exclude same-sex couples when it comes to the adoption of children.

A real irony can be found in the words of Britain's Education Secretary Alan Johnson, who said: "The primary concern, of course, has to be the children concerned in the adoption process."

It's frequently objected that the Catholic Church's attitudes display intolerance toward homosexuals in cases like this. In fact, the Church merely holds to divine truth, which in this case is in agreement with Johnson: the primary concern is children, whom the adoption process is supposed to serve, and the Church's position on this issue has been determined in that regard.

There is no entitlement for people to adopt. In fact, there are a large number of restrictions that prevent all sorts of people from adopting. For good reason, adoption authorities investigate every aspect of potential adoptive parents' lives, and an otherwise wonderful couple can be rejected for all sorts of reasons, from finances to health to lifestyle.

Why? Because it's not in the best interests of children to place them in other than the best-suited homes Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, England, said, "Marital love involves an essential complementarity of male and female," something that a same-sex couple cannot provide. Despite that, in the case of adoption, the child's best interests are now becoming secondary to the right of homosexuals to adopt.

Enter, during the week of Prayer for Christian Unity, surprise advocates for the Catholic Church in the persons of Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr. Rowan Williams and Dr. John Sentamu. They have rallied to the defense of the Catholic Church, urging it to hold its position.

One might not expect to find high-ranking Anglicans as Catholic soul-mates on an issue like this, but the two archbishops clearly see the new regulations as so contrary to religious freedom that they are setting aside the often more "progressive" leanings of their communion in favour of something that is paramount.

"The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning," the bishops said in a statement.

On that, religious groups should be able to agree. It truly is amazing how the Holy Spirit can find ways to bridge the unbridgeable.