The article, reprinted below, on the recently approved
legislation on same sex marriage in the UK, was published in the 5th January
edition of the London Catholic Herald. The author, EDMUND MATYJASZEK,
is founder and principal of Priory School Isle of Wight and is also a poet and playwright.
"The Bill has passed and is now law. Marriage is not between man and woman, as our Scripture and our Saviour tell us. It can be between man and man, woman and woman. “Wife” does not mean female and “husband” does not mean male. There was already, under the last Labour government no “need for a father” in law. As Catholics, we think differently. Last year Archbishop Vincent Nichols spoke of our being “strangers in our [own] land” with this change of law. Will we be allowed to teach our understanding of marriage, of man and woman, of gender, of sexuality outside of our churches and our homes? How long before the first case of discrimination against the tenets of the Catechism if taught in schools? Don’t let us kid ourselves: the lobbies have tasted success and they will not stop.What are we to do? Quite simply, fight. We have legal rights and should use them to the hilt. We should organise and reclaim the culture for the Christianity that begat it. We should fight for our children, our creed and our country, the Dowry of Mary.First, the 1998 Human Rights Act, Article 2, Right to Education: “In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”Secondly, our religion is a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act. Our Catechism is therefore protected. Have confidence in using it. Never apologise.Thirdly, as the Government’s own website states, parents have the right to withdraw their children from all or part of any sex education provided, but not from teaching the biological aspects of human growth and reproduction necessary under national curriculum science.There are cases already of parents banding together to stop totally unsuitable materials being used in schools. If a private person stood up in a class with these materials, the police would be called. Clothe it in officialdom, and it is permitted. Nonsense. Exercise your rights. Organise. Join forces with other Christians, and Jews and Muslims – all those with a love of life and a respect for parents as the primary educators. If parents combined, they could destroy classroom sex education. Christian governing bodies must find their steel and their spine and throw this stuff out. It can be done. It just takes guts.“Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it do.” That is from 1 Maccabees 3:58-60. Churchill used it at the end of his first broadcast in 1940 as Prime Minister. Let us take a leaf from his book."
