Rosary for the reversal of episcopal policies on abortion services and voting for intrinsic evils
By John Smeaton | 25 June 2025

In light of the UK Parliament’s catastrophic decisions last week on abortion and assisted suicide, Catholics in the UK and throughout the world have a duty to increase prayers and sacrifices for bishops. Above all, we must ask God to give our bishops the moral strength and humility to reverse their policies of permitting the signposting of schoolchildren to abortion services and Holy Communion to Catholic Members of Parliament (MPs) who vote for intrinsic evils. We must pray that bishops draw from their graces of state to give fearless leadership in resistance to the killing of the innocent throughout the whole of civil society.
In 2014, after speaking out against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, British bishops failed to follow through with essential disciplinary measures, instead making a statement which said, “There are no plans by any Bishops in England and Wales to deny communion to Catholic MPs or peers who voted in favour of same-sex marriage legislation last year.” According to the Scottish Catholic Observer, the statement was authorised by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. This sent a clear message to Catholic legislators, which stands to this day.
Just last week, eleven MPs who identify as Catholics voted to decriminalise abortion up to, and even during, birth, and six such MPs voted to legalise assisted suicide.
Bishop Philip Egan wrote in his 2024 pastoral letter regarding the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill:
“When suicide is done with full knowledge and deliberate consent, as in an assisted suicide, it is clearly a mortal sin. Likewise assisting someone [to] kill themselves is also a mortal sin. How would it be possible to offer them the Last Sacraments? What justification could a person make when, crossing into eternity after death, they meet the living God to give an account of their life — and their death?”
On 17 July, Archbishop Sherrington, the UK’s leading bishop for life issues, condemned Parliament’s decision to decriminalise abortion up to birth.
Tragically, however, both Bishop Egan and Archbishop Sherrington, along with every single one of their brother bishops, continue to back the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) programme, Life to the Full in Catholic schools. Amongst other evils, this programme promotes Childline, a registered charity which provides children with confidential advice on how to access abortion and contraception — from primary school right through to the senior years of secondary school.
Elsewhere, the Life to the Full programme presents abortion in equivocal moral terms, as a choice which pupils must make for themselves, and the scientific fact that a new human individual comes into being at the moment of conception as a Christian belief and just one possible position among many, whilst also undermining and omitting true Catholic teaching wherever it differs from the Department for Education’s “learning objectives”.
Every single Catholic bishop in England and Wales backs this programme, which represents such a danger to the lives of unborn children as well as to the health, happiness and eternal salvation of young people, their teachers and their parents from whom the duty to educate is delegated.
Although the direct and deliberate destruction of innocent life is evil at whatever stage it is committed, we must pray that the overwhelming shock of Parliament voting to decriminalise the killing of unborn children, up to and even during birth, and the legalisation of the killing of “terminally ill adults” (loosely defined), will cause Catholic bishops, the whole Catholic community and non-Catholics urgently to examine their consciences in this matter.
As Pope John Paul II put it in his 1984 encyclical Evangelium Vitae “to the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, lay faithful and all people of good on the value and inviolability of human life”:
“From the very beginnings of the Church, the apostolic preaching reminded Christians of their duty to obey legitimately constituted public authorities (cf. Rom 13:1–7; 1 Pet 2:13–14), but at the same time it firmly warned that ‘we must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29). In the Old Testament, precisely in regard to threats against life, we find a significant example of resistance to the unjust command of those in authority. After Pharaoh ordered the killing of all newborn males, the Hebrew midwives refused. ‘They did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live’ (Ex 1:17). But the ultimate reason for their action should be noted: ‘the midwives feared God’ (ibid.). It is precisely from obedience to God — to whom alone is due that fear which is acknowledgment of his absolute sovereignty — that the strength and the courage to resist unjust human laws are born. It is the strength and the courage of those prepared even to be imprisoned or put to the sword, in the certainty that this is what makes for ‘the endurance and faith of the saints’ (Rev 13:10).” (73)
The holy father continued:
“May it resound above all for us who are Bishops: we are the first ones called to be untiring preachers of the Gospel of life. We are also entrusted with the task of ensuring that the doctrine which is once again being set forth in this Encyclical is faithfully handed on in its integrity. We must use appropriate means to defend the faithful from all teaching which is contrary to it.” (82)
Three weeks ago, Voice of the Family called on its readers and supporters to say the Rosary, particularly on Saturdays, with this intention: that the Church, from the newly elected pope down to the simple laity, provide unequivocal leadership in resisting abortion, euthanasia and all other attacks on life and the family. Prompted by the latest disastrous legislative setbacks in the UK Parliament, therefore, we now urge Catholics, alone or with others, to pray the Rosary daily, and to offer sacrifices, in reparation for sins against the Blessed Sacrament, asking God to provide the necessary graces for the urgent restoration of Catholic doctrine to the voice of the Teaching Church, especially through the preaching and public policy of bishops. Please let us know if you will commit yourself to this spiritual crusade. Write to us at info@voiceofthefamily.com