Cardinal Pell criticises `post-Christian' Britain

BY FREDDY GRAY
THE AUSTRALIAN Cardinal George Pell of Sydney has launched a scathing attack on the aggressive secularism of "post-Christian Britain".
The cardinal, tipped by some to be the next Archbishop of Westminster, said the recent controversy over Britain's Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORS) suggested that a "large battle" was looming over human rights and antidiscrimination legislation.
Cardinal Pell, in a speech to a current affairs forum in Sydney, said that Australia had preserved religious values more successfully than Britain.
He said: "The religious situation in Australia is somewhat closer to that of the United States rather than post-Christian Britain. Both our Prime Minister and his challenger are serious Christians.
"Neither the British Prime Minister nor his alternative are in this mould, and the Catholic community here in Australia is larger and with a much longer and stronger tradition of contributions to public political life than in Britain, whose history and traditions are still residually anti-Catholic."
The cardinal drew attention to the way SORS had forced Catholic agencies to abandon adoption services earlier this year by denying them the right to refuse to put children into the care of a homosexual couple.
The new laws, he said, show "what can happen when a bill of rights is interpreted from the premises of a minority secularist mindset, especially when it is sharpened, as in Europe, by fear of home-grown Islam.
"Reading freedom of religion as a limited right to be offensive... is not acceptable in a democracy where many more than a majority belong to the great religious traditions — even more so when it is claimed that this is 'necessary for democracy'." He said: "Democracy does not need to be secular. The secularist reading of religious freedom places Christians (at least) in the position of a barely tolerated minority (even when they are the majority) whose rights must always yield to the secular agenda, although I don't think other religious minorities will be treated the same way."
Cardinal Pell pointed to the case of the English couple, Vince and Pauline Matherick, who were recently told that they could no longer foster children because "as committed nonconformist Christians they were unable to teach the children they are fostering that homosexual relationships are just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages".