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Showing posts with label Tony Blair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Blair. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Former Westminster Cardinal Won’t Join Tony Blair Faith Foundation After All


From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White

Until today, the website of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF) still carried a note saying that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor was expected to join their Advisory Council. But today a statement from the organization has said that the Cardinal will not join the Blair Foundation after all.

Parna Taylor from the Foundation told LifeSiteNews.com via e-mail, “We can totally understand Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wanting to review his commitments” since his retirement. Taylor said that the Foundation had “always valued the private advice” given by the Cardinal.

“While they support the broad aims of the Foundation,” Taylor continued, “we do not expect the Advisory Council members to agree with Tony Blair on every aspect of policy past or present. Their role is to provide advice and guidance, alongside many other senior religious figures who provide such insights on a less formal basis.”

The Tablet news magazine reports that since Blair launched his Foundation in 2008, “it had been intended that the cardinal would join the advisory council once he had stepped down as Archbishop of Westminster.”

It is unclear precisely why the Cardinal has reconsidered joining the Foundation. However, his plans to do so had been heavily criticised by many faithful Catholics and members of the life and family movement in Britain. Tony Blair, who was received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal O’Connor in December 2007, has been described by John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, as the “principal architect” of the culture of death in Britain during his decade as Prime Minister, largely on account of his support for abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

But Blair’s stock with the Catholic Church seems to have fallen since the installation of Archbishop Vincent Nichols as the replacement of the long-serving Cardinal O’Connor. After Blair gave an interview to a homosexualist magazine in which he chastised Pope Benedict for refusing to change the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, Nichols commented that the former Prime Minister’s strong “political instincts” have not helped his understanding of his religion.

Nichols told the Times, “Maybe he lacks a bit of experience in Catholic life.”

The Blair Foundation states that its purpose is “to promote respect and understanding about the world's major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world.” Blair himself has described the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as encouraging "faiths" to come together, overcoming differences in "doctrine." A large part of his work, he said, is to urge religious leaders to reinterpret "religious texts" metaphorically rather than literally. He said religious leaders need "to treat religious thought and even religious texts as themselves capable of evolution over time."

But Blair has been dispraised even by many on the left for his lack of depth as a religious leader.

In May, the Guardian’s Hugh O'Shaughnessy wrote that the “wheels are coming off” Blair’s religious project. O’Shaughnessy quoted Dr. Ghada Karmi of Exeter University who called him “at best – a total irrelevancy.” O’Shaughnessy noted that having annoyed the Vatican, and given “the hostility – and ridicule – that the Blairs and their associates stir up” he is “increasingly unlikely to achieve his ambition of becoming president of the EU.”

Stephen Pound, a Catholic Labour MP said that Blair’s “hubris” is “extremely counterproductive.”

“Entrance to the Vatican is only gained through a series of iron-clad, hermetically sealed, heavily padlocked and bolted doors, and I can hear them creaking shut as we speak.”


Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Archbishop of Westminster: Tony Blair "Not a Good Guide to the Teachings of the Catholic Church"


From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White

The newly installed Archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Westminster, recently told Times columnist Dominic Lawson in an interview that former Prime Minister Tony Blair is not someone worthy of trust on religious matters. Archbishop Vincent Nichols called it "extraordinary" that Blair should have presumed to "lecture" the Pope on moral issues in an interview last month.

In April Blair gave an interview to a homosexualist magazine in which he attacked Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Nichols, however, said that Blair's strong "political instincts," are "not a good guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church."

He continued, saying that "a bit more reflection is needed as to the relationship between political instinct in general - and certainly his - and the nature of the truth that the Church tries to put forward.

"Maybe he lacks a bit of experience in Catholic life."

Nichols, usually described as a "conservative" by the British press, is widely credited with having helped spearhead the fight against the Blair government's legislation that caused many of the British Catholic adoption agencies either to close or secularise in the face of new requirements that they allow adoption by homosexual partners.

At his May 21st installation Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London, Nichols urged Catholics to express themselves confidently in the public square. "Faith is never a solitary activity, nor can it be simply private," he said. "Faith in Christ always draws us into a community and has a public dimension."

In the Times, Lawson described Nichols, the former archbishop of Birmingham, as "still seething" over the adoption agency issue and describes him as never having "been afraid of taking the battle to the politicians when he feels his church is under attack."

He quotes the Nichols saying, "We have been pushed out unnecessarily ... It was a disproportionate response [by the government] and the victims are the children, not the church."

Nichols said that all government adoption agencies except for the 11 Catholic ones accepted homosexual partners for consideration for adoptions, and therefore the Catholic agencies should have been allowed to opt out of the law.

However, critics of the archbishop's reasoning point out that by the archbishop's own admission, his own Birmingham Catholic adoption agency had "for years" been accepting single homosexuals as potential adopters against the teachings of the Church. In 2007, at the height of the adoption agency controversy, Nichols told the BBC in an interview that his agency was happy to adopt children out to single homosexuals but that the objection was only to those in legally recognised domestic arrangements.

The Birmingham diocesan agency would also allow single non-homosexuals and unmarried but cohabiting heterosexual couples to be considered. However, the teaching of the Catholic Church says that to allow children to be adopted into irregular domestic situations, including with homosexual partners, unmarried single people or unmarried "common-law" partners, constitutes an act of "violence" to their natural development. Children, the Church teaches, have the right to be raised in the context of the natural family, with a mother and a father.

Critics have also pointed out that as head of the archdiocese of Birmingham, Nichols, with the rest of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, had been fully briefed by an expert on Britain's discrimination laws that it was unnecessary for any Catholic adoption agency either to close or secularise. "Regulation 18" in the law allows them to operate according to their religious beliefs said Neil Addison, a barrister and the author of a textbook, "Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law."

Addison told LifeSiteNews.com that there was no need under the law for any Catholic adoption agency in the UK to close or secularize, if they had been acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, or willing to change their practices to do so. Addison claims that the bishops were complicit in the closure or secularisation of the adoption agencies due to their unwillingness to fight for the religious nature of the agencies.

Addison told LSN that, with the exception of Bishop Patrick O'Donohue of Lancaster, the bishops of the Catholic Church of England and Wales simply ignored the existence of Regulation 18, claiming in the media that the government was forcing their adoption agencies to close.

Friday, April 10, 2009

I'm a Bad Catholic But Even I Must Defend My Church Against Mr Blair's Belief He's Now God


From The Daily Mail
By Tom Utley

How typical of Tony Blair. He's been a Roman Catholic for only 20 minutes, yet he's already lecturing the Pope on how to 'modernise' the founding Church of Christendom, so as to make its doctrines more congenial to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. I honestly think the poor man has gone mad. He really does seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that he's God.

In an interview with the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister rebukes Benedict XVI for his 'entrenched' views on homosexuality, telling him that he must recognise how the world is changing and adapt accordingly.

Now, if you ask me, it's rather the point of a Church's moral teachings that they're bedded-in and resistant to the shifting breezes of public opinion and fashion. But, of course, 'entrenched' has always been a boo-word in Mr Blair's vocabulary. In his philosophy, any idea or institution that has stood the test of more than a couple of years must self-evidently need digging up and pulling to bits.

Two unmovable forces - the Pope's doctrine and Tony Blair's ego

Two unmovable forces - the Pope's doctrine and Tony Blair's ego

But I must let him explain himself in his own, hilarious, words, which must surely consign parodists to the dole queues for ever.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Monday, April 7, 2008

Lady Thatcher Would Win Election Today

Victory in the Falklands conflict and the end of the Cold War
ranked among Mrs Thatcher's greatest achievements.


A new Telegraph YouGov poll provides clear evidence that the British people are ready to throw off Labour Party socialism and its obeisance to EU totalitarians and return to the free market growth and opportunity unleashed by Margaret Thatcher.

When asked "who is or was Britain's greatest post-war prime minister," Lady Thatcher far exceeds every other leader of government, including the post-war premiership of Winston Churchill (1951-1955). Mrs. Thatcher was ranked first by 75% of all Conservative voters, 27% of Liberal Democrats, and even 11% of Labour voters ranked Thatcher ahead of Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and other Labour Prime Ministers. The poll also indicates that if voters could choose from an array of Tory and Labour politicians "at the peak of their powers to be Prime Minister today," Mrs. Thatcher would be easily elected.

The Telegraph's story about the poll is here.



Sunday, April 6, 2008

"Some Catholic": Former PM Tony Blair is Now Raising Funds for Homosexual Group

From LifeSiteNews.com

Editorial by John-Henry Westen

LONDON, April 4, 2008 – Stonewall, England’s largest and most well-known homosexual activist organization, held its annual fundraising dinner last night, raising over $600,000. A sizeable chunk of the funds raised came in thanks to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair – the same Tony Blair who was received into the Catholic Church only a few months ago by top English prelate Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor.

The opportunity to have tea with Tony Blair secured a bid of $40,000 in an auction held at the dinner. Incidentally Blair was the keynote speaker at last year’s Stonewall fundraiser. During his speech Blair thanked the gathered attendees for their help in passing his legislation to permit homosexual civil unions. Blair said that of all the pro-homosexual legislation passed in recent years, the civil partnership law gave him more than just pride, "it actually brought real joy." The first same-sex civil union caused him to give "a little sort of skip," he said, it was "just so alive, and I was so struck by it."

Another piece of legislation passed under Blair, the Sexual Orientation Legislation, affects the Catholic Church directly. In addition to Christian schools being forbidden from teaching against homosexuality, adoption agencies, Catholic included, must permit adoption of children by homosexual couples. Blair ignored warnings from a UK Catholic bishop that Catholic adoption agencies would have to close if such legislation were passed.

And guess which agency was most concerned with ensuring that the Catholic Church could not maintain its freedom of conscience on adoptions? You guessed it – Stonewall.

LifeSiteNews.com warned, prior to Blair’s reception into the Catholic Church – as did other faithful Catholics - that should Blair be accepted into the Church without repenting of his pro-abortion and pro-homosexual past it would cause scandal.

Those warnings were ignored.

In a press release issued the day after Blair’s December 21st reception into the Church at a private ceremony in the chapel at Cardinal O’Connor’s personal residence, the Cardinal said he was “very glad” to welcome Blair into the Church.

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) commented on the matter saying, "During his premiership, Tony Blair became one of the world's most significant architects of the culture of death - promoting abortion, experiments on human embryos, including on cloned human embryos, and euthanasia by neglect.”

To respectfully contact the Archdiocese of Westminster:

Vaughan House,
46 Francis Street,
London
SW1P 1QN
Archbishop's House: 020 7798 9033
Abhreception@rcdow.org.uk


My Message to the Archbishop of Westminster

Your Eminence:

As a Catholic who winced at your very public enthusiasm and joy at the reception of Mr. Tony Blair into the Catholic Church, I hope you will be equally as public in making very clear that faithful Catholics do not support the agenda of the radical homosexual movement:

http://sunlituplands.blogspot.com/2008/04/some-catholic-former-pm-tony-blair-is.html


A clear statement by the Archbishop of Westminster explaining Catholic teaching on these matters, will lessen the scandal caused by this apostate.

Yours in Christ,

Daniel J. Cassidy


Tuesday, January 29, 2008

WHAT POLITICAL ORATORY SHOULD BE!

It was, they kept telling us, "the President's last State of the Union Address," and as it droned on your scribe kept thinking "thanks be to God." How will the President ever carry on a conversation after he leaves office without millions and billions to promise in every sentence, for every cause, foreign and domestic?

In case you've forgotten, here's what a skilled orator (and a real conservative) sounds like. This is William Hague, the former Conservative Party Leader debating the Lisbon Treaty in Parliament last Monday. The Spectator has called it "the speech of 2008."