Once again Dave Walker has a roundup of reactions to the voting in the House of Commons, see Abortion vote: blog responses.
If you want to know what the numeric outcomes of all the abortion votes were, Louise Ashworth has them summarised here (these figures appear in the deadtree Guardian but I can’t find them on the website). The IVF votes (there were two of these) are reported by the BBC here.
It appears that somebody (or maybe more than one person) has been giving out reaction quotes on behalf of the Church of England. See these reports:
Martin Revis Ecumenical News International via Episcopal News Service Religious leaders critical of vote to allow embryo research
Dr. Malcom Brown, director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, said, “Any erosion of the unique moral status of the human embryo opens the door — if only a crack — at the top of a ‘slippery slope’ to treating human beings as less than ends in themselves.”
Robert Pigott BBC Churches unhappy over father figures
But the Church of England has reserved its greatest ire for the decision of MPs to allow single women and lesbian couples to seek IVF treatment without having to consider the need for a father for their children.
Its verdict is stark.
“This vote sends a signal that fathers don’t matter,” it said.
“The Church holds that a child’s right not to be deliberately deprived of having a father is greater than any ‘right’ to a child through IVF.
“We are extremely disappointed that the important role of fathers was not recognised in the bill, and that we now have a situation where the perceived ‘right’ to have a child trumps the right for a child to be given the best possible start in life.”
…The Church of England focuses on how children end up without a father.
“There is a huge difference between a child who finds themselves in a single-parent family through bereavement or breakdown of parental relationship, and those who find themselves in this situation by design, for which this bill allows.”
By comparison the Church’s official reaction to the defeat of several attempts to cut the limit for abortion of 24 weeks’ gestation was mild.
A spokesman said that “abortion is used too freely”, but added that “the upper limit should be considered sympathetically on the basis of medical advances”.
The problem for the Church of England – a large organisation lacking strong top-down authority – is the wide range of strong views on abortion held by its members.
Update Thursday morning
The Bishop of Bradford has expressed his personal opinions see Bishop critical of abortion decision in the Bradford Telegraph & Argus.
Sigh.
CofE members? Having to endure those who presume to “speak for” you?
You have my sympathies.
Seriously: is there no room anymore, for “Scripture, Tradition and REASON” among CofE talking heads? What’s wrong w/ the Church? :-/
“is there no room anymore, for “Scripture, Tradition and REASON” among CofE talking heads? What’s wrong w/ the Church? :-/”
I think you know the answer to that one. Scripture is the source of authority. Tradition only extends back 500 years, and, like Scripture, only the parts with which one agrees are to be cited. Of course, one’s opponents are to be accused of doing exactly that. Reason? Well, reason’s dangerous. Someone used reason once to claim that God actually took more than 7 days to make the world, and us. And you know where that got us!
I am a strong supporter of gay rights, of Bishop Robinson, of the right to gay people to marry…but in this instance I am whole-hearted with the stand of the Church of England. Deliberately creating children who will never know their fathers is wrong. It has been shown that these children can suffer feelings of missing identity, of not knowing a part of themselves. Children should not be brought into the world for our own selfish motives (okay, yes, to some extent all planned children come from such motives) in such a situation. Children are not just cute, cuddly little… Read more »
Reading the BBC’s Have your Say discussion on this, what is significant is the increase in the number of people in the UK who are saying that it’s time church leaders stopped attempting to interfere with the legislative process. There is obviously an important underlying change in public mood going on in Britain now: a few years ago, the right of bishops to come out with strong interventions in public moral debate was virtually unchallenged. Now, there is a sense that they are on borrowed time when it comes to assuming a place in the public eye. I think the… Read more »
I don’t support the Church of England on any of these issues. It does not speak for me. Of course IVF should be made available for single women and lesbians. I’m more concerned about males who become fathers and then run off in that there they break a relationship and escape responsibility. It has to be said, though, that some of these mothers and their offspring are better off without.
“Deliberately creating children who will never know their fathers is wrong. It has been shown that these children can suffer feelings of missing identity, of not knowing a part of themselves.”
Malarkey, uriel.
Does a child come into the world thinking
“Parental love? Check. Caring? Check. Feeding? Check. Shelter? Check. . . . Great, up to this point—now, loving, caring, sheltering, feeding parent, SHOW ME YOUR PENIS!”
It’s the loving, caring, feeding and sheltering by the parent(s)—in a household which is STABLE, which is why the number ‘2’ of parents seems to be best—that matters.
Not the parental plumbing.
Of course, Jesus did have a loving and supportive foster father, but did not have a “known biological male father” in any real sense — or so the church teaches. How is it that a church that holds as central a doctrine that perforce commends foster parenthood — as part of divine design — suddenly forgets this when it comes to making an informed decision on similar matters?
JCF: Please tell that to the billions of children, past, present, future who have been and are being brought up in homes with a male father, a female mother, and siblings. It may be difficult sometimes, but look how our human race survived. I cannot shake off the feeling, to be honest, that while gay and lesbian couples, or single parents, provide the same love and care that heterosexual couples have done. It may be that I live in a socially/politically conservative society with the trappings of “liberalism” and modern technology just to show we are a modern society. But… Read more »
Well if people are accumulating negative feelings and experiences with fathers – including those big talking head fathers we hear speaking so loudly all around us in church life – maybe it has something to do with just, exactly those fathers? Ah, the traditional magic of penis. Will it ever really go away? Will it ever really lead to anything except tribalism, domination, and such? More importantly, how many possessors of modern penises have heart and empathy and reason and serenity and reliable inner strength for peace mongering or for fairness? Compared to these intangibles, the tangible body part is… Read more »
But fathers don’t matter. Well, mine certainly doesn’t. And I turned out just…. oh.
Well, at least we’ve got the Bishop of Bradford to act as a terrifying Oedipal father-figure for us. Him and his monstrous patriarchal storm-god.
The emasculated Church of England is rendered impotent to resist secularism’s advance. Sadly, Rowan has compromised his office so, that his objection is ignored.
Ren
you make it sound as though allowing a tiny number of people to have children without a father suddenly eradicates all traditional families in the world.
Traditional families are not threatened by this at all, just as same sex marriages do not threaten heterosexual ones.
Sharing a blessing you already enjoy does not take anything away from you.
(1) Every child ever born had precisely one father. Not more. Not less. (2) Every child ever born had precisely one mother. Not more. Not less. (3) The above incredibly simple (and incredibly true) facts, incidentally, give the lie to those fundamentalists who believe that everything but everything is incredibly complex and full of grey areas. (4) Parliament believes that the ideologies of their little cliques within one nation at one time in history are a greater and more far-reaching reality than these universal, international realities which have been in place since the human race began. (5) They also think… Read more »
“impotent to resist secularism’s advance” Yet again, the idea of attack. We are Christians. Christ giveth us the victory. Why are “secularism’s advances” such a threat to you? We are citizens of the kingdom of God, and even the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Why does it bother you that values you think are contrary to the Gospel seem to be prominent in society? I agree with you when it comes to abortion and such, but that’s immaterial. The question is: given that you believe that God loves His Creation, redeemed it Himself by actually becoming part… Read more »
JCF: It is not about penises. Actually, I would be against surrogate mothering, etc., which might leave a man with his own biological child but the child without its biological mother, on purpose. I would also be against artificial insemination of the wife of a couple where the husband is infertile. Children, as children, are no doubt pretty well off if the things you list are provided. But they grow up, and many of them grow up to ask questions about their origins – where did I get my blue eyes, or my big jaw, or …. who is a… Read more »
World poverty and the degradation of our global environments/ecologies – our mass extinction of too many species to count? – plus the ODC and other similar genetic pool degradations? – do far, far, far, far more to harm the children of our planet than having two moms or two daddies. Than having just one mom or one daddy – could ever do? The African saying is, if I recall, It takes a village to raise a child. With far, far, far more tangible and lifelong consequences. The narrative that hedonisms are the main interrupt of fathering, traditional or otherwise, is… Read more »
I am amused no end at the pompous conservatives who go on and on about the “nuclear family” as though it is some sort of holy thing. It is not. Even in Scripture we do not find nuclear families as we understand them today. I grew up in a more traditional culture where people were not so mobile as they are now. As result, my family was mother, father, children, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. To me the nuclear family is a small and sad little thing, a stunted characature of the extended family model in which I was raised, where… Read more »
As far as I am concerned, the issue is *intentionally* creating a child who will not have or even know one of his or her (inevitably existing) biological parents. The make-up of the family is not the issue. It is the intentionality.
Uriel
robroy: “The emasculated Church of England is rendered impotent to resist secularism’s advance.” You are an American, aren’t you? The USA was founded as the first secular Western society, wasn’t it? What on earth qualifies you to tell us anything about the relationship of the C of E to the state? Are you supposing a policy of state religious establishment is good for the UK (or, more precisely, a section of it, viz. England), though your compatriots would never deem it wise for their own society?
Why the “Cult of Intentionality”, uriel? Billions upon billions of human beings, have come into the world w/ LESS than perfect intentionality (perhaps the majority of those EVER born?). Unless you plan to legislate against ALL “unintended pregnancies” (requiring a “license to procreate”, as in some Sci Fi distopias?), then why hypocritically outlaw just this ONE type of . . . very-much intended pregnancy? WTF? This sounds particularly strange on the left side of The Pond. All the paranoid “What Ifs?” about something which is just status quo, here. One of my closest (straight) friends, is a single mother, who… Read more »
“As far as I am concerned, the issue is *intentionally* creating a child who will not have or even know one of his or her (inevitably existing) biological parents.”
————————————
Then I presume you’ll be lobbying to close down all sperm banks, because all of the children born via sperm donation – including those born into a family headed by one man and one woman – are created this way. (And BTW: many of these children do eventually meet their biological parents, as do many adopted children today.)
Hi Ford I have 3 questions: (1) How many times did I mention ‘nuclear family’? (Clue: the answer I am looking for is ‘zero’.) (2) How can I be opposed to extended families when I deliberately married into one (the Patels, who are about as ‘extended’ as you can get), and as a matter of fact think them significantly better than nuclear families? Cousins hooray. Grandparents hooray. ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ – yes it does. Why not check before writing? (3) There is a false dichotomy made between nuclear and non-nuclear. Non-nuclear is a hodge-podge… Read more »
JCF – I have read your postings here and, if I’m right, elsewhere (Father Jake?) and always with sympathy and agreement. Apparently we disagree on this issue. All children should be loved, and I have no reason to think your friend’s child isn’t – indeed, it would be inappropriate, and irrelevant, for me to express myself with regard to that at all. I do, however, think that given that childen who do not know their biological parents frequently feel the deep need to know where they came from biologically; that governments have been pressured to pass laws allowing access to… Read more »
Christopher, I inferred it from your first three points. That and the fact that I have never, till this point, heard an Evangelical who didn’t accept the basic precepts of conservative American Evangelicalism. They state clearly that family is “mother, father, children”. They seem to think the extended family is a product of the “it takes a village” statement from that heathen liberal demoness Hilary Clinton. I am pleased that you do not think this way, since I believe this is nothing more than conservative American Evangelicals sanctifying early 20th century American culture as Divinely granted, not unlike the traditional… Read more »
Hi Ford- I think that is because in families where grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles are prominent, divorce is rare and the mother-father-child family unit is simultaneously strong. I mean: Cosby has an extended family, but it is not exactly known for its divorces. Asian culture likewise: extended families, low divorce rate. Conclusion: we already have the answer as to what system is best: it’s just that it is an answer we don’t want to look at, because in alive/crazy/chaotic families where there is blessed individualism (cf. Anne Atkins’s ‘Parenting for Fun’) there is no hiding-place. Unlike sick native… Read more »
“it’s just that it is an answer we don’t want to look at” Exactly, Christopher, my point was that those who refuse to see it are the very people who claim such high regard for the family. It is the conservatives who refuse to consider any alternative to the “nuclear family”, even though that family is, as we both agree, niether traditional nor all that supportive. And that support goes far beyond divorce. Time was when a woman had a baby, she had numerous female relatives around her to help her through. Now she goes home within 24 hours of… Read more »
Christopher: “Unlike sick native English culture” – I think you should be very careful what judgements you make here. There are very good reasons why British family life has developed the way it has, and I don’t think it is right at all to write it off. There may be many things that are wrong with it, but the same can be said of the various other cultural understandings of family that have made their home in Britain recently – calling them “sick” would not be helpful.
Hi Fr Mark- I am amazed! Dumbfounded! You know as well as I do that when people have multiple offspring by different concubines, or shack up together on an impulse, or become ‘stepfathers’ with concomitant vast increase in danger to the children of the house, they are not doing so as a result of profound sociological thinking and comparison of different options. They are doing it because they can, and because it’s easier and lazier. In societies that do not see such things as options, they do not happen. Therefore the fault lies squarely with the permissive movers and shakers.… Read more »
Hi Ford-
So let’s get this straight: American Evangelicals are opposed to the family involvement of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. What material could I read on that?
Christopher, all you need to do is follow American politics. They consistently oppose any government support for the family, or anything that even hints of it. Family is father, mother, kids, that’s it. Repeated statements of the holiness of “the nuclear family” so called, are legion. But I do find some common ground in your previous post, though I do not agree at all with your judgement as to the reasons for people’s behaviour. I was in England in March, and I was struck by what was on the BBC. The number of kids with kids, obviously having what a… Read more »
Christopher: “In societies that do not see such things as options, they do not happen.” No, I don’t agree: more likely, they are just more repressed and less able to articulate such things. I don’t think we have much to learn from other societies’ pre-modern views of marriage, I am afraid – our society has been there already, and moved on for very good reasons – and I think that is the view of most young Europeans too. Our liberal culture has come as a necessary reaction to nasty things in our past.
Hi Ford- WWJD? Of course, compassion in the short term, but would J want the situation to repeat itself or structures to be in place which would likely lead to that? This question is simpler than some like to make out. There are already numerous societies that are not in this mess. Not only that but our own society has not always been. Replicate the conditions and teachings of the societies which are getting it right in the societies that are getting it wrong. Fr Mark, it is quite obvious that there are on average fewer instances of these things… Read more »