Catholic bishops in Britain have been captured by Stonewall’s gender ideology

By John Smeaton   |   26 April 2023

A recent article in the Catholic Herald, a London-based Catholic newspaper, refers to the “excellent” research published by Policy Exchange, a UK think-tank, which draws attention to the promotion of gender ideology in schools, including the “institutional capture of multiple departments of the civil service” by the militant pro-LGBT lobbying group Stonewall. 

The Catholic Herald article states: 

“Sadly the Stonewall-esque lexicon of diversity and inclusivity has also crept into many Catholic and other Christian schools despite the inclusion in the curriculum of Christian morality regarding sex and marriage.”

What is not mentioned in the Catholic Herald article is the disturbing extent to which the Catholic bishops in Britain have been captured by Stonewall and their gender ideology, through the agency of the Catholic Education Service, which is responsible for the national policy of the bishops in England and Wales.

The Catholic secondary school nearest my home is the Salvatorian College in Harrow Weald, North West London. Alan Bryant, the head of school, lists some of the “big issues” to which the school is responding. These issues include LGBTQ+ and Relationships and Sex Education, which, Mr Bryant says, “are based upon the Catholic Education Service’s ‘Made in God’s Image’ support materials and rooted in Catholic teaching”.

Scandalously, the support materials for Catholic teachers in the CES document ‘Made in God’s Image: Challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying in Catholic schools’ are far from being rooted in Catholic teaching. They are rooted instead in the thinking of Stonewall, an organization which militantly opposes the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.

‘Made in God’s Image’ singles out for praise Stonewall’s ‘Teachers’ Report 2014‘, saying that it approaches the topic of homosexuality “sensitively and respectfully”. In its turn, the 2014 Stonewall report recommends, as “good practice in the classroom” of primary schools, the use of picture books for “encouraging talk” about same-sex families, such as And Tango Makes Three: a book about two male penguins raising a chick, which is now being promoted on the website of the Archdiocese of Liverpool under “Equality and Diversity Books”.

In secondary schools, Stonewall’s teachers’ report recommends the experience of Sally-Anne, an academy teacher in South East England, who says:

“In A-level languages, discussing what a ‘family’ consists of, challenging stereotypes about what a family is — students seemed very comfortable. Some students have gay and lesbian parents and were very open about this, others in the year group are ‘out’ and very confident, knowledgeable, forthcoming.”

Breaking down young people’s opposition to the moral evil of homosexual acts appears to be at the heart of what is being promoted in Catholic schools by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales through their publication ‘Made in God’s Image’, a point more fully explored in a previous article published by Voice of the Family.

Meanwhile, another document for Catholic educators from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, entitled ‘Learning to Love‘, infamously and erroneously declares: 

“Here we would like to emphasise that this exalted form of love exists just as powerfully in relationships between people of the same sex as it does in heterosexual relationships.”

Neither of these documents explains the doctrine of the Catholic church on homosexuality and the care of homosexual persons, as set out, for example, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the Prefecture of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI in the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. This document states:

“There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts ‘close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved’.

“Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts ‘as a serious depravity… (cf. Rom 1:24–27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered’. This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.

“Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided’. They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is however ‘objectively disordered’ and homosexual practices are ‘sins gravely contrary to chastity’”.

The title of this document is mentioned in a footnote in ‘In God’s Image’ on a page entitled “Guidance on challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying in our Catholic schools”; and it appears in a “further reading” list at the end of ‘Learning to Love’.

Catholic parents have a grave duty to resist what’s happening in Catholic schools and to teach their children the truth about homosexuality. They must heed the warning of the great German bishop, the Lion of Munster, Archbishop von Galen, who, at the height of the power of the Nazi regime, and inspired by Pope Pius XI’s teaching in his encyclical on the Christian education of youth, warned parents about teachers seeking to undermine Catholic doctrine:

“God protect your children from such teachers! And if teachers who have lost the faith dare nevertheless to teach so-called Catholic religion classes, woe to the poor children who fall into the hands of such traitors. Better no religion classes in the schools than religion classes that destroy rather than build up, that poison rather than heal! Keep watch, Christian parents, and observe carefully whether your children are learning the true faith in the school and are being directed in the truly Christian way of life!”¹

The danger to the Catholic faith, and to the innocence of children, is all the graver when the attacks come from the shepherds of the Church whose primary responsibility is to go into the world “and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Catholics, whether or not they are parents, have a duty to speak out in this unprecedented crisis, and to pray and fast for their bishops, remembering the words of Our Blessed Lord:

“And whosoever shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me: It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.” (Mark 9:41)

Notes

1. Daniel Utrecht, The Lion of Munster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis (TAN, 2016), page 157.