Catholic Bishop claims debates on LGBT issues are like ‘arguing with an alcoholic’
A Catholic Bishop who previously called for pro-LGBT politicians to be banned from recieving communion has claimed that people who support LGBT equality are too intolerant.
The comments were made after the government’s integration tsar said that permitting homophobic teaching in Catholic schools is “not OK”.
Responding to concerns about Muslim faith schools this week, Dame Louise Casey told MPs: “I don’t really have a view on which religion it is that’s promoting [intolerant] views, but it is not OK – the same way it is not OK for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. That’s not OK either.”
Speaking told the Catholic News Service, Bishop of Portsmouth Philip Egan responded that the debate on “sexual morality” is “like arguing with an alcoholic”.
He said: “After a while, they won’t argue with you on grounds of reason, they just become furious and respond that way. There is something in our culture increasingly like that.”
The Catholic Herald reports that he insisted “any restrictions on Catholic schools passing on the Church’s moral teachings would be worthy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
The same Bishop previously insisted Catholic politicians who voted for same-sex marriage should be denied Holy Communion.
He said in 2014: “When people are not in communion with the Catholic Church on such a central thing as the value of life of the unborn child and also in terms of the teachings of the church on marriage and family life – they are voting in favour of same-sex marriage – then they shouldn’t be receiving Holy Communion.”
Bishop Egan claimed denying Communion was “always an act of mercy”. It is done, he said, “with the hope and prayer that that person can be wooed back into full communion with the Church.”
He insisted that equal marriage would “pervert authentic family values with catastrophic consequences for the wellbeing and behaviour of future generations.”
The row comes after a number of evangelical Christian schools were downgraded by Ofsted for failing to “promote respect” for LGBT people and British values.
