New Archbishop gets rap from NSS for self-serving “faith school” comments
The new Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, is carrying out his threat to try to force his religion into the lives of everyone in the country, whether they want it or not. In a speech to Heythrop College at the University of London, Nichols called for an increase in religion in schools.
He said Catholic schools give “a genuine service to our society at large”. “Schools of a religious character are upfront, overt and very reasoned about the values that shape the education. Whereas I think often those that would claim to be neutral are covert in the values that they present to the children.”
He also said: “There can be no genuine human ecology that fails to recognise the faith and religious experience which is innate in human beings and central to many people in our schools today. An important part of the construction of a healthy human ecology is therefore that expressions of faith and the practices of religion are given their space within a school, both according to the school’s own tradition and mandate and according to the variety of faith and religion which are in that school.”
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, was quoted in a Press Association report, saying: “Vincent Nichols wants even more indoctrination in schools and for them to be even more in thrall to the Church. That’s just the approach they are belatedly rejecting in Ireland.
“Most are sickened by the Church regarding homosexuals as intrinsically disordered and requiring them to live a life of celibacy. The Archbishop hasn’t worked out that the more he tries to impose Vatican values, the faster both adults and children will desert his church.
“Christian Research forecast that the two million normal Mass attendance in Britain in 1990 will wither to 100,000 by 2050. With Vincent Nichols at the helm, it looks set to fall to 100,000 very much sooner.”
Terry Sanderson, president of the NSS, said: “Given what has just happened in Ireland, I don’t think a very convincing case can be made for promoting Catholic ‘morality’ to anyone. After all, the obscenities in Ireland were perpetrated by the teachers – and they are the ones supposedly promoting these ‘values’ to small children.”
