English and Welsh Catholic bishops warn that equality legislation currently before Parliament poses a threat to religious freedom. Here the chairman of their Christian Responsibility and Citizenship Committee explains why it is so important to challenge the secular status quo
It would be a strange world where there were no tension between Church and State: either the Church would have become the compliant tool of a total-itarian regime, or Christ’s kingdom would have arrived on earth without our noticing it. But if we claim the right to be “the King’s good servant, but God’s first”, as St Thomas More said on the scaffold, then tension is inescapable.
Tension, of course, can be creative but for that to happen the secular state needs a new understanding of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. And Catholics need to be clearer and more confident in proclaiming the Gospel vision of what it is to be human, and how that vision helps us all to serve the common good.
The Church today is faced with slow but steady pressure on religious freedom and the cumulative impact of successive measures causes me growing concern. Over the last few years we have seen questions by the Charity Commission about the “public benefit” of religious charities; threats in the current Equality Bill to the right of the Church to appoint people whose lives are in keeping with its tenets; repeated challenges to Christian imagery or practice in the workplace; and even incidents where local officials have tried to suppress traditional expressions of Christmas. Yet this is a country that prides itself on valuing diversity and religious freedom.
The problems we face have many facets but let me single out two. One is that senior positions in public life are increasingly being held by people who have grown up profoundly ignorant about what religion is, how it operates, and what impact it has on believers and the wider community. A second is a clear strand of thinking in British society today that is actively hostile to religion in all its forms. It is both articulate and skilled in its presentation. It seeks to denigrate religious belief and practice, and create an atmosphere of intolerance rather than knowledge and reasoned discussion.
We should not get this out of perspective: this is only the attitude of some, and attacks on the Church are nothing new. Nor, however, should Catholics ignore their responsibilities: they have the freedom in a democracy to put their case and they should not be shy of doing so in a spirit of charity and openness. However, it is important to understand why Catholics have this responsibility and why they need to begin to educate secular culture about their faith even if it chooses not to agree with it.
That education is vital. Ignorance is not a form of benign neutrality. It can represent a cultivated prejudice, a misunderstanding of the life of faith that undermines it in the public sphere and diminishes its contribution to the common good of our society.
The Christian life is lived in responsibility to the community of faith, its tradition and its future hope. That community is not just a sociological phenomenon. For all its many obvious and painful failings, it understands itself as sustained by the grace of Christ. And if it is to be faithful to Christ then it must also be faithful to what is the lasting universal human good. That is why so much of the Church’s energy is given to the real practical works of charity which not only want to change the condition of the poor, marginalised, powerless and voiceless, but also seek to build a culture in which the human person can flourish.
That is why the Church is passionately engaged in the issues that face society and the debates that surround them. It cannot stand by while public debate is conditioned by utilitarian, economic and technological questions only. For there are deeper moral and human questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives and actions. The answer we give to these determines the sort of society we want to be.
And that is why we must resist a situation in which religion is regarded as a legally permissible private eccentricity; allowable behind closed doors once a week, but not in any way to be given expression in public or working life. That is not acceptable. Nor is it consistent with the right to religious belief and practice in Article Nine of the European Convention on Human Rights. But our response needs to be tailored to suit the differing circumstances: argument, where there are minds open to reason; challenge, where we are faced with unwarranted restrictions; and, where our values are denied, reclaiming in the public space our true identity as a contributor to the common good.
Rational argument does get results. As a result of discussions with the Charity Commission, their final guidance on how religious charities meet the public benefit test was greatly improved. Now, in the Equality Bill, Catholic bishops are arguing our points comprehensively, as The Tablet has reported. We have made clear our concerns in meetings with officials, in a formal written submission to the bill’s scrutiny committee at Westminster, in oral evidence given to the committee, and in continuing discussions with government.
One key issue is the way the Bill narrows the definition of “employment for the purposes of religion” so that it only covers liturgical acts or the teaching or promotion of doctrine. It would not cover pastoral or representative roles where the credibility of the post-holder would be fatally undermined if their life were openly at variance with the Church’s teaching. This is a problem that is resolvable if the political will is there, as I hope it will be.
The second approach is to challenge the unthinking assumptions of officialdom. As legislation gets turned into practical guidance, at every stage it becomes progressively more risk-averse until the front-line staff are operating on instructions that go well beyond the requirements of the law. In some quarters “diversity” has become one of those lazy trump words like “health and safety” that mean that argument is inadmissible. But who says that the front-line staff have got it right? Can they produce the legal authority that supports their instructions? And what attention have they paid to the fact that religion is part of diversity too, and equally entitled to the protection of the law?
The Equality Bill will be accompanied by official guidance when it comes into force. The Government needs to give careful consideration to this and its consequences. This will be particularly important for the interpretation of “harassment”, where at present an atheist cleaner could declare that they found the presence of a crucifix “offensive” and the employer would thereby be potentially guilty of harassment.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales will be working with those drawing up the guidance to ensure that concerns like these are covered. But at the same time we will need to draw up legally supported guidance of our own that will give Catholics both the confidence and the arguments to question unwarranted assertions about what the law requires.
We are also working closely with the Commission of European Bishops’ Conferences on drawing up an equivalent document to underpin discussions in Brussels on the forthcoming European Union Equality Directive. We can avoid many of the areas of potential conflict if we can develop a more rounded approach to questions of diversity and equality, which currently feature so strongly in our political discourse and legislation.
We need a richer appreciation of these values so that they produce legislation that serves the common good and does not produce injustice and denial of religious freedom. Finding this language is in not only in the interest of the Catholic Church and other major religious communities, it is a better service to all our people.
Finally, for the positive reasons I mentioned at the start of this article, we have to put our voice back into the public space. The Church does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of humanity. Our motivation must fundamentally be one of service to others and proclaiming the truth, and the distinctive Catholic voice in social affairs needs to be heard clearly.
As bishops, as priests and Religious, and as laity, we need to act with charity in the service of others, but at the same time to speak up for our freedoms, our rights, and our contribution to society. There are many in our society who want to hear more from a Church marked by integrity and a profound respect for humanity – which is as much a challenge for us in the Church as for others.
To meet that challenge the contemporary world needs a better knowledge of who we really are, and to recognise not only our contribution to its good, but our right to live the faith that inspires it. The freedom to do that should not be too much to ask of a society that believes in equality and respects the faith of its citizens.