Category: Pro-Life

The Darlington Nurses and the Defence of Women’s Dignity

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

It began, as many moral crises do, with something small — a room, a rule, and a refusal to be silent. At Darlington Memorial Hospital in County Durham, a group of women working in one of Britain’s most trusted public institutions found that the ordinary expectation of modesty and safety could no longer be taken for granted. When a male colleague identifying as female began to use the women’s changing room — despite confirming that he was not taking hormones and was trying to conceive a child with his girlfriend — the women raised concerns. They did not call for punishment, only for privacy. But management’s response was to order them to undergo “re-education,” to expand their “mindset” and become more “inclusive.”¹

When twenty-six nurses signed a collective letter to human resources, they were removed from their own changing area and assigned to a converted office that opened directly onto a public corridor. The new space, they said, was degrading, exposed, and humiliating. One of the nurses, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, later described suffering panic attacks at the thought of changing in front of a biological male.² What began as a question of policy soon became a question of conscience.

The women sought help from the Christian Legal Centre, which began representing them in what is now an active employment tribunal case alleging harassment, indirect discrimination, and breach of workplace safety regulations.³ Their stand quickly drew public sympathy as ordinary people recognised in their plight something emblematic of a wider unease: the steady dismantling of boundaries once considered self-evident — between man and woman, truth and fiction, reality and ideology.

The nurses’ case inspired a petition launched by CitizenGO under the title Stand with Darlington Nurses for Safe Spaces for Women.⁴ The petition calls for government and NHS leaders to reaffirm women’s legal right to single-sex changing rooms and toilets, grounded in biological sex rather than subjective identity. By the end of 2024, nearly 50,000 people had signed, transforming what began as a local workplace dispute into a national cause.⁵ It stands now as a rallying point for those who refuse to see womanhood reduced to a feeling or belief.

On 28 October 2024, representatives of the nurses met with Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Whitehall to deliver the petition in person. Streeting, though a Labour minister, spoke with unexpected candour. “Sex is biological,” he said, “and single-sex spaces matter.”⁶ It was a rare moment in British politics — an acknowledgment that compassion cannot be divorced from truth. Yet it also highlighted the contradiction now at the heart of public policy: the attempt to uphold women’s rights while redefining what a woman is.

At issue is not mere etiquette but the law itself. Under the Equality Act 2010, “sex” and “gender reassignment” are both protected characteristics. NHS trusts have adopted internal policies allowing employees to use the facilities of their chosen gender identity, claiming to act in compliance with equality duties. Yet the same law allows for single-sex services and spaces “if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”⁷ Recent judgments — including rulings cited by the Supreme Court and the Scottish appeals process — have reaffirmed that the term “woman” in legislation refers to biological sex, not self-identification.⁸ The contradiction, therefore, lies not in the law but in its misapplication.

For the Darlington nurses, this is not an abstract legal puzzle but a daily moral trial. They have spoken of losing faith in their profession’s leadership, of being mocked as “bigots,” and of finding solace only in the solidarity of their colleagues and the prayers of strangers. Their testimony cuts through the euphemisms of officialdom: they are not asking for privilege, only for the restoration of common sense — that women should not be compelled to undress beside men, however they identify.

The Trust’s “Transitioning in the Workplace” policy, which first allowed the disputed access, remains under review.⁹ The Health and Safety Executive’s 1992 regulations require employers to provide separate facilities for men and women unless private single cubicles are available.¹⁰ Yet such statutory safeguards mean little when administrators, afraid of controversy, interpret every protest as prejudice. In this sense, the Darlington affair reveals more than one institution’s confusion; it exposes the moral cowardice of a nation that no longer believes it may distinguish between truth and error without apology.

The Christian understanding of the body as a revelation of divine order offers an antidote to such confusion. “Male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27) is not a social construct but a statement of ontology. From this truth flow the principles of modesty, privacy, and respect — not as concessions to fragility but as protections of human dignity. A society that denies these foundations cannot long defend the vulnerable, for it loses the very language of protection. When the nurses of Darlington refused to be silent, they acted not merely as employees defending workplace rights, but as witnesses to a deeper reality: that compassion divorced from truth becomes cruelty disguised as care.

To sign the petition in solidarity with these women is not an act of partisanship, but of conscience. It is a declaration that biological truth and moral integrity are not negotiable, that every woman deserves safety and dignity in her workplace, and that society must not sacrifice reality to ideology. The quiet courage of these nurses invites each of us to stand with them — for when truth is silenced in the hospital, it will soon be silenced everywhere.

In every age there are those who stand quietly against the prevailing wind, reminding the world that conscience still breathes beneath the bureaucracy. The Darlington nurses did not seek fame, yet their steadfastness has compelled both politicians and citizens to confront the consequences of ideological conformity. Whether their legal case succeeds or fails, their example has already begun to restore moral clarity. For in defending the meaning of womanhood, they have defended the very notion that truth can still be spoken without fear.

  1. Christian Concern, Safe Spaces for Women: Nurses Meet with Health Secretary, 2024.
  2. Christian Concern, Darlington Nurses Given “Dehumanising” Changing Room, 2024.
  3. Christian Legal Centre, Case File: Darlington Nurses, 2024.
  4. CitizenGO, Stand with Darlington Nurses for Safe Spaces for Women, accessed October 2025.
  5. Christian Concern, Safe Spaces for Women: Nurses Meet with Health Secretary, 2024.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Equality Act 2010, c. 15, Schedule 3, Part 7, s. 26.
  8. For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2022] CSIH 4; Re Sex Matters [2023] UKSC 33.
  9. The Times, “NHS Trust Policy Allowed Biological Men to Use Women’s Changing Room,” 2 Nov 2024.
  10. Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, SI 1992/3004, Reg. 20.

The Orphaned Altar: On the Crisis of Episcopal Fatherhood

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

By the Archbishop of Selsey

A Silent Crisis Beneath the Surface
There are moments in the Church’s history when the gravest crises are not those proclaimed in thunder from the pulpits or the decrees of Rome, but those suffered in silence by her sons. Such is the case today, when many priests—those who once came to the altar aflame with the love of God—now minister beneath the shadow of a wounded fatherhood. Their suffering is seldom spoken of; yet it gnaws at the heart of the Church. It is the hidden trial of a generation of priests orphaned not by heresy or persecution, but by the cold neglect of their spiritual fathers.

The crisis of fatherhood—so visible in society, where fathers have abdicated responsibility for their children—has entered the sanctuary. Bishops, once spiritual patriarchs who guided their clergy as sons, have become administrators, functionaries, and managers of decline. Their governance too often resembles the bureaucracy of a corporation rather than the heart of a father. The result is an orphaned presbyterate: weary, mistrustful, and fearful. What begins as administrative efficiency ends as spiritual sterility.

The Fatherhood that Gives Life
The priesthood, by its nature, is relational. Every priest must stand both in persona Christi and sub episcopo, in filial obedience to his bishop as to a father in Christ. The bishop’s ring signifies not only governance but spousal fidelity to the Church and paternal love for his priests. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “Where the bishop is, there is the Church”¹—yet he also meant that where the bishop is not father, the Church withers into institution.

In the golden age of the Fathers, bishops were shepherds whose charity bound together the presbyterate and flock in a single spirit. St. Gregory the Great described the bishop as “a watchman set upon the walls of Israel”², one who guards both the purity of doctrine and the souls of those under his care. The bishop’s first duty was not strategy but sanctity. He was to pour himself out for his priests, that they might pour themselves out for their people.

But today, that supernatural fatherhood is often eclipsed by managerial pragmatism. Meetings replace mentorship; compliance replaces counsel; fear replaces fraternity. Many priests now dread a summons to the chancery more than the final judgment. They no longer expect paternal concern, only procedural rebuke. In such a climate, holiness becomes private heroism rather than shared pursuit.

The Withering of Fraternal Communion
The health of the Church depends not on policies but on love. When bishops cease to love their priests, when priests no longer feel the warmth of fatherly affection, the supernatural life of the Church begins to bleed away. The priest, deprived of affirmation and guidance, turns inward. Some grow cautious, preaching only what offends no one. Others grow hardened, their zeal dulled by cynicism. Still others, desiring escape, fill their lives with distractions and comforts.

In earlier centuries, the bishop’s household was a school of holiness. Priests were formed by the example of their prelate’s prayer, fasting, and simplicity. But in many dioceses today, bishops live in splendid isolation, surrounded not by brothers but by lawyers, secretaries, and consultants. The house of prayer has become an office; the mitre, a badge of status. The faithful look on, bewildered, while the priests beneath such leadership struggle to remember why they first left all to follow Christ.

The Holy Curé of Ars laboured eighteen hours a day, hearing confessions and offering the Holy Sacrifice with tears. His sanctity rebuilt a nation scarred by revolution. Yet he would be dismissed in many modern dioceses as “too pious,” “too rigid,” or “insufficiently pastoral.” His zeal is out of fashion because the supernatural has been eclipsed by the sociological. Bishops speak of accompaniment but rarely of conversion; of mercy but seldom of repentance. They wish to smell like the sheep, yet too often smell only of politics.

Bureaucracy and the Eclipse of the Supernatural
One of the great deceptions of our time is to confuse activity with vitality. Endless consultations, synodal reports, and policy documents give the illusion of motion while the soul of the Church languishes. The very structures designed to support priests have become labyrinths of paperwork. The priest who once found solace in his bishop’s blessing now finds himself mired in compliance forms and risk assessments.

It is not administration that kills, but the substitution of administration for fatherhood. When the shepherd delegates the care of souls to committees, his priests are left to fend for themselves. “Feed my sheep,” said the Lord to Peter³—not “survey them,” nor “appoint a task force.” Yet many priests live as though their father has forgotten those words. The Church cannot be governed as a corporation without ceasing to be a family.

The Psychological and Spiritual Toll
Behind the statistics of declining vocations lies a deeper tragedy. Priests today are among the loneliest men in society. Studies show widespread distrust between clergy and bishops⁴; many confess to isolation, anxiety, and fear of reprisal. The priest who preaches the moral law risks complaint; the one who maintains reverence in the liturgy risks accusation of rigidity. In such conditions, virtue becomes suspect and mediocrity safe.

Some priests respond with stoic endurance; others withdraw into a safe professionalism that avoids controversy but also avoids conversion. A few, deprived of spiritual fatherhood, lose themselves to the very world they were ordained to sanctify. Thus the bishop’s failure to father becomes the devil’s victory twice over—first by silencing truth, then by corrupting its messenger.

A Mirror of the World’s Fatherlessness
The collapse of paternal identity among bishops mirrors the world’s wider loss of fatherhood. The same cultural forces that have made earthly fathers absent, fearful, or effeminate have also weakened spiritual fathers. Many bishops, trained in the post-conciliar decades of experimentation and ambiguity, have never known genuine paternal formation themselves. They were not taught to command with love, nor to love with authority. They are products of a therapeutic age that mistrusts both discipline and sacrifice.

And yet the Church can no more survive without fathers than a family can. When bishops cease to be fathers, priests become orphans, and the faithful—children of those priests—grow rootless. The contagion of fatherlessness spreads from chancery to rectory, from rectory to home, until the very idea of authority is despised. The devil, who hates the name “Father,” rejoices in such a hierarchy.

The Patristic Measure of True Shepherds
The Fathers of the Church would scarcely recognize many of today’s episcopal priorities. St. Cyprian taught that a bishop must be “united in heart with his priests, sharing their labours, their tears, and their dangers”⁵. St. John Chrysostom warned that the bishop who neglects his clergy commits a sin against the Body of Christ. St. Gregory Nazianzen resigned his see rather than become a mere functionary, declaring that “to lead others, one must first be purified oneself.”

This is the pattern of episcopal life the Church once held up as ideal: ascetical, paternal, prophetic. The bishop was not an administrator of budgets but a man of prayer, whose tears could baptize a diocese. When such men led, their priests followed willingly—even unto martyrdom. The vitality of the early Church sprang not from programs but from the living transmission of holiness.

The Roots of Renewal
The renewal of the priesthood will not begin in offices or conferences. It will begin when bishops again become fathers, and priests sons. True fatherhood does not flatter; it corrects, encourages, and forgives. It does not isolate; it draws near. It does not fear holiness in its sons; it rejoices in it. Bishops who imitate Christ the Good Shepherd will attract vocations even in desolate times, because love always begets life.

What can the faithful do in the meantime? First, pray and fast for priests and bishops. The Rosary is no longer optional in this war for souls. Offer reparation for the sins of shepherds, but also for their wounds. Many bishops act as they do because they have forgotten that they, too, were once priests trembling at the altar. Pray that they may recover the simplicity of their first Mass.

Second, give your priests the warmth of genuine friendship. Invite them into your homes. Encourage them when they preach the truth. Write to them when they are maligned. Many have never heard a layman say, “Father, your priesthood has changed my life.” Such words can rekindle hope more powerfully than any policy.

Finally, resist the temptation to despair. The priesthood belongs to Christ, not to bureaucrats. The same Lord who called Peter from his nets can still raise up saints from the ruins of clericalism. When the hierarchy forgets the Cross, God raises prophets from the laity. The Church’s renewal will come not from strategy but from sanctity.

The Model of the Crucified Father
Christ on the Cross is the image of every true bishop: arms outstretched, heart pierced, blood spent for his children. In Him, authority and love are one. The world can imitate compassion, but it cannot imitate Calvary. It is there that spiritual fatherhood finds its meaning—not in power, but in sacrifice. The bishop who forgets this becomes an official; the priest who forgets it becomes a hireling.

When bishops once again weep for their priests, and priests once again lay down their lives for their flocks, the Church will bloom even in the desert. Until then, we live in the long Lent of ecclesial fatherlessness. Yet even now, grace is not absent. Among the ruins, there are still fathers who love and sons who obey, still altars where the Lamb is offered in purity and faith. In that hidden fidelity, the Church endures.

A Call to Courage and Contrition
Every bishop should kneel before his priests and ask himself: “Do they see in me the face of Christ? Do they hear in my words the voice of a father?” If the answer is uncertain, repentance is the only path forward. The episcopal palace must again become a house of prayer. The miter must be exchanged for the towel of the servant. The shepherd must rediscover the smell not only of the sheep but of the Cross.

The world’s night grows darker, and the Church must shine the brighter. Our age does not need bishops who blend into the world’s noise, but men who bear within themselves the stillness of Gethsemane. Priests will find their courage again when they see courage on the cathedra; they will become holy when holiness is enthroned above them.

Conclusion: Hope Through Paternal Renewal
The renewal of the Church will not come from the top down, nor from the bottom up, but from heart to heart—from father to son. When bishops once more speak to their priests as fathers, when priests rediscover in their bishop the image of Christ, the channels of grace will open again. And from that grace will flow the courage to confront the world’s darkness with divine charity.

Let us therefore pray not for new strategies but for new hearts: hearts of fathers, hearts of sons, hearts conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who is both Priest and Victim, Shepherd and Lamb. Then the orphaned priests of our time will cease to wander, and the Church will once more be known not for her structures, but for her sanctity.

  1. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8:1.
  2. St. Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis (Book II, ch. 4).
  3. John 21:17.
  4. The Catholic Project, Catholic University of America, Survey of American Catholic Priests (2022).
  5. St. Cyprian of Carthage, De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, 5.

From Ruin to Restoration: The Story of Catholic England

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

By the Archbishop of Selsey

On the feast of St Michael, 29 September 1850, Pope Pius IX restored diocesan bishops to England and Wales. Nicholas Wiseman, made Archbishop of Westminster, cried out with joy that Catholic England was “restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament.”¹ That orbit had been broken for nearly three centuries. The Church in England had lived in eclipse. It had been stripped of its altars, mocked by its enemies, betrayed by its rulers, and sustained only by the blood of martyrs and the courage of recusants. What was restored in 1850 had first been shattered in 1559, when Elizabeth’s Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity outlawed the ancient Mass.²

The parish altar, once the heart of every village, was torn down. Chalices were hidden in cupboards, vestments ripped for rags, bishops thrown into prison, priests exiled or compelled to conform. Families were dragged to court, fined into ruin for missing the new services. By the 1580s, a Catholic who refused to attend owed £20 each month, a fine calculated to destroy.³ In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis.⁴ To Catholics, it was a defence of truth; to the Crown, it was proof of treason. Parliament tightened the law still further. In 1585, the Act against Jesuits and Seminary Priests decreed that any priest ordained abroad who returned home should die as a traitor, and any layman who gave him shelter could share his fate.⁵ From that moment, the presence of a Catholic priest on English soil was a hanging crime.

Yet priests came anyway. Edmund Campion, Oxford’s golden boy, traded honours for a disguise and a chalice. He moved by night, heard confessions in barns, preached Christ in attics. Caught, racked in the Tower, he went to Tyburn in 1581 and told his judges they condemned their own ancestors. He died with calm defiance.⁶ Margaret Clitherow, the butcher’s wife of York, opened her home to fugitives. When arrested, she refused to plead, knowing that a trial would force her children to betray her. For this she was crushed to death beneath stones in 1586, thirty-three years old, pregnant, praying for her killers.⁷ Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit carpenter, turned wood and stone into weapons of survival. He built priest-holes so cunning that many remain hidden even now. He saved countless priests, then died under torture in 1606.⁸ More than three hundred Catholics were executed under Elizabeth and James, many for nothing more than saying Mass.⁹

For those who lived, recusancy meant a slow martyrdom. Fines ruined estates, laws excluded children from schools, informers prowled villages. Whole communities gathered at midnight for a furtive Mass, watchmen posted on the lanes. Rosaries were fingered in whispers, catechisms taught in secret, faith lived under constant threat. The Armada of 1588 convinced Protestants that Catholics were Spain’s agents. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the folly of a few, stained the entire community with treason. Bonfires and sermons each November renewed the suspicion. Later, Titus Oates’s fabricated Popish Plot in 1678 sent innocent men to the gallows.¹⁰ In 1780, the Gordon Riots set chapels aflame and mobs howled “No Popery!” in the streets.¹¹

Rome did not abandon England. In 1623, Pope Gregory XV appointed William Bishop as Vicar Apostolic, the first of a line of bishops without dioceses, shepherds of shadows who confirmed children in barns and ordained priests abroad.¹² And in London, Richard Challoner sustained the hidden faithful with his revision of the Douai-Rheims Bible and his Garden of the Soul (1740), a book of prayers that became the catechism of generations who had no parish or procession but carried the Church in their hearts.¹³

By the late eighteenth century the storm began to lift. The Relief Act of 1778 permitted Catholics to inherit land, though it provoked the Gordon Riots. The Act of 1791 allowed registered chapels and schools, still under scrutiny.¹⁴ At last the great Relief Act of 1829 swept away most remaining restrictions. Catholics could sit in Parliament, hold office, live as citizens.¹⁵ The long night of penal times was ending.

But the missionary structure of vicariates could no longer suffice. Catholics were multiplying, parishes thriving, schools spreading. In 1850, Pius IX restored the hierarchy by Universalis Ecclesiae. Thirteen dioceses were created, with Westminster as metropolitan. Wiseman, newly made cardinal, was appointed archbishop.¹⁶ Protestant England fumed. Lord John Russell railed against papal aggression in his “Durham Letter.”¹⁷ Effigies of the Pope were burned, and Parliament passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act forbidding Catholic bishops to use Anglican titles.¹⁸ But the storm passed, and the hierarchy endured.

Catholic England was visible once more. Parishes multiplied, schools flourished, orders revived, Irish immigration filled churches, and converts like John Henry Newman gave prestige. Westminster Cathedral rose in 1895 as a sign of permanence.¹⁹ Through two world wars Catholics fought, served, and suffered alongside their countrymen. Chaplains brought the sacraments to the trenches, parishes endured the Blitz. By mid-century, Catholics were no longer outsiders. The old stigma of recusancy was gone.

But even as the Church grew strong in public, new storms rose from within. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) sought renewal but brought upheaval. The traditional Latin Mass, the anchor through centuries of persecution, was replaced. Vocations fell. Catechesis faltered.²⁰ The faith that had survived rope and rack now waned in an age of comfort. Meanwhile Britain itself drifted into secularism, with laws liberalising abortion and divorce, reshaping family life, and eroding Christian morality. Later decades exalted ideologies hostile to Catholic truth. Attendance dwindled, parishes closed, vocations dried up. The diocesan structure restored in 1850 still stands, but the Church it governs is weakened.

And yet the story is not finished. The martyrs still speak. Campion from the scaffold, Clitherow from beneath the stones, Owen from the hidden chamber, Challoner from the secret chapel. They endured not only for their own age but for ours. Their sacrifice is our summons. The England that once outlawed the Mass now shrugs at it. Indifference has replaced hostility. But the demand remains the same: fidelity to Christ, whatever the cost.

If Catholic England was restored to its orbit in 1850, it must not drift into eclipse today. The Church that survived rope and rack must not surrender to compromise. Catholic England will be truly restored only if her children reclaim the fidelity of the martyrs, the patience of the confessors, the courage of the recusants. The dawn broke once before. It can break again. But only if the faith that endured the darkness burns as brightly in our own time.

  1. Nicholas Wiseman, Pastoral Letter from out of the Flaminian Gate (1850).
  2. Statutes of the Realm: 1 Eliz. I, c.1–2 (1559).
  3. 23 Eliz. I, c.1 (1581).
  4. Regnans in Excelsis (Pius V), 25 February 1570.
  5. 27 Eliz. I, c.2 (1585).
  6. Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (1935).
  7. John Mush, A True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mrs Margaret Clitherow (1586).
  8. Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (2006).
  9. John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (1975).
  10. John Kenyon, The Popish Plot (1972).
  11. Norman Davies, The Isles: A History (1999).
  12. Catholic Encyclopedia, “England (Ecclesiastical History).”
  13. Richard Challoner, The Garden of the Soul (1740).
  14. 18 Geo. III, c.60 (1778); 31 Geo. III, c.32 (1791).
  15. 10 Geo. IV, c.7 (1829).
  16. Universalis Ecclesiae (Pius IX), 29 Sept. 1850.
  17. Lord John Russell, “Durham Letter,” Hansard (1850).
  18. 14 & 15 Vict., c.60 (1851).
  19. Owen Chadwick, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement (1990).
  20. Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy (2004).

Ordinary Men, Dangerous Ideas

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

By the Archbishop of Selsey

When Adolf Eichmann sat in his glass booth in Jerusalem in 1962, the world expected to see a monster. What it saw instead was a man—quiet, bureaucratic, unremarkable. That was the horror.

The Holocaust survivor Yehiel Dinur, who collapsed in the courtroom at the sight of him, later explained that it was not memory that overwhelmed him. It was the realisation that Eichmann was not a demon. He was ordinary. Evil, he saw, does not always come with horns and fire. It comes in the form of ordinary men surrendering their consciences to dangerous ideas.¹

That truth is no less urgent today. The ideologies have changed, but the mechanics remain. Islamism sanctifies violence as obedience to God. Secular progressivism dehumanises its opponents as “fascists” and “threats to democracy.” Even within the Church, leaders have repeated this language, denouncing fellow Christians at the Unite the Kingdom March as extremists while remaining silent about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, slain in America only days before for his public witness.²

The double standard is glaring. A mother praying outside an abortion clinic is branded a terrorist; a jihadist who slaughters families in Israel is excused as a “resistance fighter.” A Christian patriot with a banner is shamed by bishops; a leftist agitator screaming hatred is praised as a prophet of progress. When truth is inverted this way, society reveals not only political corruption but spiritual sickness.

The danger lies not only in what is done but in how it is spoken. When political leaders label their opponents “Nazis” or “enemies of humanity,” when bishops rebuke the faithful more harshly than they rebuke the spirit of the age, the result is the same: people cease to be treated as neighbours. Once dehumanised, they can be silenced, punished, erased. History shows that the road to atrocity begins not with bullets but with words.³

Here the wisdom of the Church resounds. St Augustine warned that fallen man justifies his corruption unless restrained by grace.⁴ St Thomas Aquinas taught that a law contrary to the natural law is no law at all but a perversion.⁵ Pope Pius XI condemned Nazism as a false religion.⁶ Pope Leo XIII warned that when the authority of Christ is rejected, conscience loses its compass and men are “driven headlong into every excess of error and crime.”⁷ The ideologies of our time—whether Islamist or secular progressive—repeat this pattern. They make evil appear good, and they sanctify hatred in the name of righteousness.

But here is the paradox for us, my beloved brethren. We cannot resist evil by mirroring it. We cannot fight dehumanisation with more dehumanisation. We must oppose lies, yes, and boldly. We must defend truth, yes, and courageously. But we must do so without losing charity. For the Cross teaches us that Christ conquered not by hating His enemies, but by offering Himself for them. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34)

This is the Church’s path: to proclaim truth without compromise and to live it with sacrificial love. To expose the rhetoric of the world for what it is—poisonous, dangerous, destructive—yet not to be poisoned by it ourselves. To recognise, even in our fiercest adversaries, men made in the image of God, and to call them to repentance.

Eichmann’s ordinariness is a warning: ideology can make any man capable of horror. The rhetoric of our age is a warning: dehumanisation always prepares the ground for persecution. And Christ’s Cross is the answer: only love, grounded in truth, can break the cycle.

We must not be naïve. The age of tolerance has revealed itself as an age of ideology, and Christians will be its scapegoats. But let us not tremble. We know the pattern. We have seen it before. And we know, too, that the final word is not the banality of evil, but the triumph of grace.

Ordinary men, dangerous ideas. That is the danger. Ordinary Christians, faithful to Christ. That is the hope.

For a more indepth presentation visit Nuntiatoria.org

Footnotes
¹ Yehiel Dinur, interview with Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes (CBS News, 1979).
² Reports on the Unite the Kingdom March, September 2025; cf. coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, State Farm Stadium Memorial, Glendale, AZ, 21 September 2025.
³ Cf. contemporary political rhetoric: President Joe Biden’s remarks, “MAGA Republicans a threat to democracy” (Philadelphia speech, 1 September 2022); Labour MPs on gender-critical feminists, Hansard debates 2023–25; Canadian federal cases against pro-life campaigners, 2023–24.
⁴ St Augustine, De Natura et Gratia, ch. 3.
⁵ St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 93, a. 3.
⁶ Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, 1937.
⁷ Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 1885.

The Tyranny of Fear: Paracetamol, Autism, and the Age of Distrust

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

By the Archbishop of Selsey

There was a time when the family medicine cabinet represented the ordinary mercies of Providence — a fever brought down, a headache relieved, a child comforted. Yet in our present age, even the simplest remedy is caught up in a theatre of fear. Paracetamol, known in America as Tylenol, has been transformed from a trusted household staple into the villain of a thousand conspiracies. What has changed? Not the substance of the drug, but the substance of our culture.

We live in an era where suspicion is stronger than truth, and fear louder than reason. The story of paracetamol and autism tells us less about medicine and more about the sickness of the modern mind.

Science and Its Distortions
Let us begin with the facts. A major Scandinavian study published in JAMA Psychiatry (2023) compared siblings — one exposed prenatally to acetaminophen, another not — and found no association with autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability¹. In plain speech: within the same family, the presence or absence of paracetamol exposure made no difference.

Yet a different review, published in 2025, proclaimed the evidence “strong” for a link. Social media seized on this word, “strong,” and translated it into “proven.” A Johns Hopkins study in 2019 observed correlations in umbilical cord blood, and activists declared a “direct connection”². Even images were invented to persuade: a grotesque diagram showing vaccination, fever, Tylenol, and finally a weeping child labelled “autism.”

Here we see the perennial temptation: to mistake suggestion for certainty, association for causation. The lie has wings; truth must walk on crutches.

Regulators, Lawsuits, and the Spectacle of Fear
What then do regulators say? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed adding a caution to labels, not because causation is proved, but because in our climate of suspicion, silence itself would be seen as complicity³. The European and British authorities have stood firm: paracetamol remains the recommended analgesic in pregnancy, when used prudently⁴.

And what of the courts? In 2024, American lawsuits alleging that Tylenol caused autism were dismissed. The judge ruled that the expert testimony failed the very test of scientific reliability. Yet though the law cast out the claim, the idea remains in circulation, because fear feeds on itself⁵.

The courtroom has become theatre, the news cycle a pulpit of panic. In such an age, the burden of proof is no longer on the accuser but on the accused.

The Moral Disease Beneath the Medical Debate
What is at stake is not merely whether paracetamol is safe, but whether our civilisation can still distinguish truth from error, evidence from conjecture, prudence from hysteria.

This age of distrust is the child of modernism: once we deny objective truth in theology, it is not long before we deny it in science. If there is no Magisterium in the Church, there will be no authority in medicine. If we will not believe the prophets, neither will we believe the epidemiologists.

We have seen this same drama play out in the vaccine debates. The Church affirms that parents have the duty of prudence, not of panic. To refuse all medicine out of fear is not holiness but presumption. To treat speculation as revelation is to exchange science for superstition.

The Catholic Response: Prudence and Trust
What then should a Catholic do? The answer is as old as St. Thomas: virtue is found in prudence, the golden mean between recklessness and cowardice.

Paracetamol has been used for generations. The most rigorous studies show no causal link with autism. Regulators advise moderation, not abstinence. The Church teaches that the goods of creation are not to be despised, but received with thanksgiving and discernment.

Yet we must also be vigilant. The family is the first guardian of life. If we surrender discernment to lawsuits and internet images, we fail in our duty. Prudence requires both attentiveness to scientific evidence and resistance to the theatre of fear.

Conclusion: The Tyranny of Fear and the Triumph of Truth
My beloved, what the paracetamol debate reveals is the deeper malady of our age: the tyranny of fear. In a culture that no longer believes in truth, every whisper becomes an accusation, every study a conspiracy, every medicine a menace.

But Christ did not die to make us slaves of suspicion. “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The Christian is called to discern, not to panic; to reason, not to rage. The medicine cabinet is not the tabernacle — it does not hold the Bread of Life. Yet neither should it become the idol of fear.

We must walk the narrow way: trusting in God, using His gifts with prudence, rejecting both complacency and hysteria. For if fear reigns in the mind, faith cannot reign in the heart.

And so I say, with Fulton Sheen: “Truth does not need to be defended, only proclaimed.” The truth is this: no evidence proves that paracetamol causes autism. The greater danger lies not in a bottle of tablets, but in a culture addicted to fear.

For a more indepth presentation visit Nuntiatoria.org

  1. U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, In re Acetaminophen ASD/ADHD Litigation, dismissal ruling 2024; appeals pending.
  2. Gustavson, K. et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2023 – Scandinavian sibling-comparison cohort study.
  3. Wang, C. et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2019 – Johns Hopkins cord blood study.
  4. FDA, “FDA announces proposed labeling changes for acetaminophen products,” 2025.
  5. EMA/MHRA joint statements, 2025 – guidance on paracetamol in pregnancy.

The Silence That Betrays

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

By the Archbishop of Selsey

It was inevitable that Cardinal Cupich’s decision to bestow an award upon Senator Dick Durbin would provoke indignation. The senator’s record on abortion is no secret: he has voted to preserve and expand the destruction of the unborn for decades. That a Catholic bishop should present him with a “lifetime achievement award” in the name of the Church is not only puzzling but scandalous.¹

And thanks be to God, there are bishops with the courage to speak. Bishop Paprocki in Springfield, Durbin’s own ordinary, raised his voice immediately.² Archbishop Cordileone in San Francisco also joined him, warning that honoring a Catholic politician who defends abortion gravely undermines the Church’s witness.³ Bishop Conley of Lincoln followed soon after, calling the decision “shocking and bewildering” and urging Cardinal Cupich to reconsider.⁴ These are shepherds unafraid of wolves.

But the greater scandal lies not in Chicago’s award, but in the silence that followed it. Out of more than four hundred bishops in the United States, only three have spoken. Three voices against four hundred mute throats.

What does this silence betray?

It betrays a fear of men greater than the fear of God. It betrays the confusion of shepherds who imagine unity means inaction, and charity means complicity. It betrays a hierarchy that has grown so accustomed to ambiguity that clarity now feels like extremism.

History records that Pilate washed his hands in silence.⁵ Caiaphas tore his garments but said nothing for truth. Today, when infants are torn limb from limb in the very clinics Senator Durbin defends, silence is not neutrality but complicity.

Some will say: “But unity, Archbishop! Unity must be preserved!” Yes—but unity in what? In false witness? In collective equivocation? True unity is not built on silence but on truth. The early Church was united because Peter confessed Christ as Lord, not because he sought to appease Caesar. St. Paul did not hesitate to resist Peter “to his face” when the Gospel was endangered.⁶

Others will say: “But dialogue, Archbishop! We must keep the door open.” Dialogue is a means, not an end. If dialogue becomes a pretext for honoring those who defy God’s law, then it is no longer dialogue but betrayal. The world already applauds Senator Durbin for his politics. What he needs from the Church is not applause but correction.

A “consistent ethic of life” that forgets the unborn is not consistent at all. It is a seamless garment torn to shreds. To praise Durbin’s defense of immigrants while ignoring his contempt for the child in the womb is to strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.⁷

Bishops are not called to be managers of ambiguity. They are successors of the apostles, stewards of the mysteries of God. When they stand mute in the face of scandal, the faithful are left to wonder: do these men fear Caesar more than Christ?

St. Thomas More once observed that “qui tacet consentire videtur” — “silence is taken for consent.”⁸ And the oft-repeated warning remains true, even if its precise source is debated: that the triumph of evil requires only that good men do nothing.⁹

The faithful are watching. The world is watching. And Heaven itself bears witness. Our Lord will not ask whether we preserved institutional decorum or avoided conflict among ourselves. He will ask: Did you speak for the least of my brethren? Did you defend the child in the womb? Did you feed my sheep with truth?

The Chicago award to Senator Durbin is a scandal. But the greater scandal is the silence that has followed it. The blood of the unborn cries out to heaven, and too many shepherds pretend not to hear.

It is time for the trumpet to give a clear sound.

For a more indepth presentation visit Nuntiatoria.org

  1. Commonly attributed to Edmund Burke; no exact wording found in his works. See The Yale Book of Quotations (Yale University Press, 2006), p. 98.
  2. National Catholic Register, “Cardinal Cupich: Senator Durbin Award is About Immigration, Not Abortion,” Sept. 2025.
  3. The Pillar, “Paprocki: On Durbin award, ‘I had to say something’,” Sept. 23, 2025.
  4. America Magazine, “Paprocki, Cordileone oppose Chicago award to Durbin,” Sept. 23, 2025.
  5. LifeNews, Steven Ertelt, “Bishop Conley Joins Call For Cupich To Abandon Award For Dick Durbin,” Sept. 24, 2025.
  6. Matthew 27:24.
  7. Galatians 2:11.
  8. Matthew 23:24.
  9. Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529), bk. 2, ch. 14.

Quiet Conformity: The New RSHE Mandates and the State’s Imposition of Gender Ideology

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

How England’s updated sex education guidance undermines parental rights, marginalises religious truth, and reshapes children’s identity through legal compulsion.

In July 2025, the Department for Education quietly issued a revised version of its Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) Statutory Guidance, replacing the 2019 framework that had shaped England’s approach to teaching children about relationships, sex, and wellbeing. While couched in cautious bureaucratic language, this updated guidance deepens the ideological commitments of its predecessor—particularly in relation to the affirmation of gender ideology in both primary and secondary education.Subscribed

The new statutory document reasserts the primacy of the Equality Act 2010, stating that schools “must ensure that they comply with the relevant provisions” of that Act, under which “sexual orientation and gender reassignment are amongst the protected characteristics”¹. As in the 2019 edition, gender reassignment is treated not merely as a category for legal non-discrimination, but as a legitimate and affirmed identity to be integrated into school life and curriculum. In practice, this compels schools to treat a child’s declaration of transgender identification as a protected personal reality, and any failure to do so could be classed as discriminatory.

The curriculum expectations are unequivocal. The guidance mandates that “all pupils [are] to have been taught LGBT content at a timely point as part of this area of the curriculum”². This is to be “fully integrated into their programmes of study… rather than delivered as a stand-alone unit or lesson”³. In other words, affirming LGBT content—including trans-identification—is no longer optional, even for schools with religious character.

This development is more than pedagogical; it is ideological. The 2025 guidance instructs schools to “avoid language which might normalise harmful behaviour among young people—for example gendered language which might normalise male violence or stigmatise boys”⁴. Though framed as safeguarding advice, such language mirrors the ideological presuppositions of radical gender theory: that traditional sex distinctions are not only outdated but potentially harmful, and that gender itself is a social construct detached from biological reality.

While the document nominally allows schools with a religious character to “teach the distinctive faith perspective on relationships,” it immediately qualifies this by insisting that “teaching should reflect the law (including the Equality Act 2010) as it applies to relationships”⁵. Thus, a Catholic school may still teach the Church’s anthropology—that man is created male and female, that sex and gender are not severable—but it may not do so in a way that would undermine or fail to affirm transgender identification, lest it fall afoul of equality legislation. The Church’s witness is thereby marginalised, tolerated only within limits set by the State.

This has profound implications for parental rights and religious liberty. While the guidance upholds the right of parents to request withdrawal from sex education, it reaffirms that there is “no right to withdraw their pupils from relationships and health education”⁶—subjects that now regularly include ideological content on gender identity, relationships, and sexuality. Nor may parents prevent children from being taught about transgenderism in integrated contexts under the banner of inclusion or safeguarding. From three terms before their sixteenth birthday, the child may override even a parent’s request to withdraw from sex education⁷.

The erosion of natural and moral categories does not stop at curriculum content. The RSHE guidance, though not primarily focused on facilities, indirectly affirms policies that challenge the integrity of single-sex spaces. By insisting that schools create environments that are “inclusive of all pupils” and that they avoid any action that “discriminates against protected characteristics”—including gender reassignment—it places institutional pressure on schools to accommodate self-declared gender identity in areas such as toilets and changing rooms. However, what the guidance omits is just as telling: it does not affirm, clarify, or remind schools of their existing legal right to maintain single-sex facilities under Schedule 3 of the Equality Act 2010, which permits such provision where it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”⁸

In fact, schools are still legally entitled to provide toilets, showers, and changing spaces separated by biological sex, especially in consideration of safeguarding, dignity, and privacy. Yet by failing to state this explicitly, the Department leaves headteachers and governors exposed to activist pressure and confusion—inviting the assumption that to limit access to facilities based on sex, rather than gender identity, would be discriminatory. In reality, it remains lawful for schools to provide single-sex spaces and to make case-by-case decisions about access, particularly where safeguarding or the rights of other pupils are concerned⁹.

In this way, the State places itself not only as the provider of education, but as the final arbiter of human identity. It is not simply transmitting knowledge, but shaping the self-understanding of the child—defining what it means to be a person, a man, a woman, a moral actor. As Catholics, we must reject such an overreach. It is not the role of the State to dictate the content of the human soul, nor to impose a pseudo-anthropology that severs body from identity, nature from vocation, and freedom from truth.

The Church teaches with clarity and compassion that our identity is not self-constructed, but divinely given. “Male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). This foundational truth about human nature is not a matter of bigotry or fear, but of love—of fidelity to the God who made us, and to the flourishing He desires for each person.

It is not enough for Catholic educators to quietly comply, nor for parents to outsource their children’s moral formation to an ideologically compromised system. We must act. Catholic schools must form the whole person in truth—not only in religious instruction, but across the curriculum. Parents must reclaim their rightful role as the first educators of their children. And the Church must equip its faithful to resist the slow imposition of untruth through policy dressed in pastoral concern.

Where the State demands silent assent, we must respond with faithful witness. Where the culture says affirm, we must have the courage to say no—not out of malice, but out of love for the child, for truth, and for the God who is Truth incarnate.

Thanks for reading Selsey Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share

  1. RSHE Statutory Guidance – July 2025, p. 36.
  2. Ibid., p. 36.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid., p. 5.
  5. Ibid., p. 37.
  6. Ibid., p. 6.
  7. Ibid., p. 6.
  8. Equality Act 2010, Schedule 3, Part 7, Paragraph 27.
  9. Department for Education, Gender Questioning Children: Non-Statutory Guidance for Schools in England, December 2023.

When Change Becomes a Creed: The Crisis of Continuity in Church and Culture

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

Why Cardinal Goh’s “Adapting to Change” reveals not renewal, but rupture—and how the same error is collapsing the West from within

The July 2025 reflection by Cardinal William Goh of Singapore, titled Adapting to Change, arrives at a time when the Church is facing profound upheaval. His meditation—presented as a scriptural and pastoral exhortation—functions in reality as a theological statement: namely, that change is intrinsic to fidelity, and that without adaptation, tradition becomes sterile and irrelevant.

This premise, though expressed with spiritual sincerity, raises significant concerns for the faithful. It proposes a model of theological development that blurs the boundaries between immutable truth and mutable practice—one that has contributed to the ongoing crisis of identity, doctrine, and liturgy in the post conciliar Church.Subscribed

Change as a Theological Imperative?
Cardinal Goh’s core thesis is that “not changing is being unfaithful to our past,” and that even theological expression must evolve in order to preserve relevance.¹ He maintains that while doctrine cannot change, theology “is always evolving,” and that a failure to re-express truth in new forms risks rendering the Christian message “redundant, if not irrelevant.”²

He applies this logic to traditional practices such as fasting and penance, but most significantly to the Mass itself. The Eucharist, he argues, has undergone constant change since apostolic times, and must continue to change so as to remain “faithful to its original meaning yet relevant to our times.”³

Yet this view omits the vital distinction between authentic development and doctrinal mutation. It conflates adaptation in delivery with alteration in content. The Church does not maintain her relevance by reshaping her message to fit each era’s preferences. Rather, she remains the enduring sign of contradiction in every generation—her witness sharpened, not softened, by fidelity to what is eternal.

St. Vincent of Lérins and the Rule of Tradition
The true measure of change in the Church is not pastoral expediency or sociological effectiveness, but fidelity to the rule of faith. As St. Vincent of Lérins taught, genuine development must occur eodem sensu eademque sententia—“according to the same sense and the same judgment.”⁴ Any theological development that reinterprets the meaning of doctrine, rather than clarifying or deepening it, must be rejected.

Cardinal Goh’s suggestion that tradition demands constant re-expression fails to account for this distinction. If change is made the criterion of fidelity, then the deposit of faith becomes plastic—shaped by the moods of the age rather than grounded in divine revelation.

Liturgy and the Myth of Continuous Evolution
The notion that the Roman Rite has always changed and therefore must continue to do so requires qualification. Organic development—yes. Radical rupture—no. The received liturgy of the Church, from the earliest Eucharistic prayers to the codified Roman Canon, developed slowly and reverently across centuries. The upheavals of the late 20th century, by contrast, introduced discontinuities in structure, language, orientation, and theology. These were not “new wineskins,” but a new vessel altogether.

If we are to preserve the Mass as a true participation in the heavenly liturgy, as taught by the Fathers and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent, then it must be protected from innovation that compromises its sacrificial nature, its vertical orientation, and its mystical continuity with the worship of the saints.

Penance and the Collapse of Catholic Memory
Cardinal Goh rightly laments the decline in penitential discipline following the modern substitution of individual choice for communal practice. Friday abstinence, once a unifying sign of Catholic identity and solidarity with Christ’s Passion, has become optional and largely forgotten.⁵

This erosion of visible markers of faith is not the result of failing to adapt, but of adapting unwisely—abandoning discipline in the name of flexibility. The ancient practices of fasting, abstinence, and liturgical observance do not need to be rebranded for relevance; they need to be restored with reverence.

The Danger of Ambiguity
The greatest danger in Cardinal Goh’s reflection is not its call for spiritual attentiveness, but its lack of theological precision. Phrases such as “theology is always evolving” and “we must be in sync with the times” risk reducing revealed truth to a negotiable category. The Church does not exist to keep pace with the world, but to call the world to repentance and conversion.

Christ is not “new wine” in the sense of novelty, but in the sense of divine fulfilment. The parable of the wineskins is not an endorsement of constant reinvention, but a warning: when new forms are poured into unsuitable structures, both the wine and the vessel are lost (Mt 9:17).

The Secular Parallel: Cultural Collapse by Innovation
This theological tendency toward perpetual adaptation finds an uncanny mirror in secular culture. The post-Christian West is governed by a similar fallacy: that all progress is necessarily good, that inherited wisdom must be deconstructed, and that anything old is by definition oppressive.

From architecture to education, morality to medicine, Western societies have adopted the same creed: change equals virtue. Thus, classical learning has been supplanted by identity politics, marriage by contractual fluidity, and the natural law by arbitrary feelings. This is not progress—it is cultural amnesia, a forgetting not only of who we are but of what it means to be human.

The logic of Cardinal Goh’s “dynamic fidelity,” applied outside the Church, leads to grotesque results: sex reassignment in children, the redefinition of family, euthanasia for the lonely, and sacrilegious celebrations masquerading as mercy. When truth becomes negotiable, power fills the void. When identity is fluid, tyranny is inevitable.

Conclusion: Fidelity Means Preservation, Not Innovation
True progress in the Church is measured not by novelty, but by deeper immersion in the mystery already revealed. The Catholic tradition is not an empty shell awaiting reinterpretation, but a living heritage handed down with authority and guarded by the Holy Spirit.

As the Church faces increasing pressure to adapt her doctrines, redefine her sacraments, and restructure her identity, it is essential to recall the timeless counsel of the Fathers: What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all must remain the criterion of truth.⁶

To preserve the faith is not to resist growth, but to ensure that every development is faithful in content and form to the one deposit entrusted to the saints. Let the Church adapt only insofar as she never ceases to be the Church—and let society repent of its own blind embrace of change before it forgets what truth is altogether.

Thanks for reading Selsey Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share

¹ Cardinal William Goh, “Adapting to Change,” 5 July 2025, Facebook Reflection.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, ch. 23.
⁵ Goh, “Adapting to Change.”
⁶ St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, ch. 2.

Public Sin and Ecclesial Responsibility: The Forgotten Meaning of the Confiteor

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

“I confess to Almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned…”

These familiar words from the Confiteor, recited at the beginning of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, are not a mere liturgical formality. They are a declaration—before God and before the Church—that our sins, even when privately conceived, affect the whole Body of Christ. The phrase “and to you, my brothers and sisters” is not poetic embellishment. It is a solemn admission that we are accountable to one another because we are mystically united in the Communion of Saints.

The Church’s Ancient Witness: Public Penance as Restoration
In the early Church, this accountability was visibly enacted. Grave sins, particularly those causing public scandal, were confessed publicly before the congregation. In the medieval Church, this developed into the rite of public penance, where notorious sinners were ritually expelled on Ash Wednesday by the bishop and only readmitted to the sacraments after a period of visible penance, culminating in solemn reconciliation on Maundy Thursday. These rites were not acts of humiliation but of restoration—remedies applied by the Church to heal her members and preserve her witness.

The Crisis Today: Silence in the Face of Manifest Grave Sin
This principle—public sin demands public repentance—has been tragically obscured in modern times, especially in the realm of politics. In the name of tolerance, diplomacy, or false mercy, the Church now too often treats grave public scandal as a private spiritual matter. But silence in the face of manifest sin is not mercy; it is pastoral abandonment. It leaves the sinner in peril, misleads the faithful, and weakens the Church’s public witness.

A Grave Parliamentary Offense
On 17 June 2025, the House of Commons passed Clause 191 of the Crime and Policing Bill, effectively decriminalising abortion up to and including birth. It is the most radical change to British abortion law in over fifty years. Among the 379 MPs who voted for this barbaric provision were thirteen self-professed Catholics. Some also supported the legalisation of assisted suicide—undermining the Church’s constant teaching on the inviolability of human life. These votes were not cast in ignorance or ambiguity, but with full knowledge of the Church’s moral law.

The Named Offenders

Those MPs include:

  • Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour – Salford)
  • Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Labour – Mitcham & Morden)
  • Andy McDonald (Labour – Middlesbrough & Thornaby)
  • Dr Ben Spencer (Conservative – Runnymede & Weybridge)
  • Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat – Dorking & Horley)
  • Dan Aldridge (Labour – Weston-super-Mare)
  • Kevin Bonavia (Labour – Stevenage)
  • David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat – Brecon, Radnor & Cwm Tawe)
  • Colum Eastwood (SDLP – Foyle)
  • Florence Eshalomi (Labour & Co-op – Vauxhall)
  • Claire Hanna (SDLP – Belfast South & Mid Down)
  • Pat McFadden (Labour – Wolverhampton South East)
  • Oliver Ryan (Independent – Burnley)

To date, there has been no public act of repentance, no retraction, no clarification, and no statement of conscience from any of them. If, by the grace of God, any one of them has since repented, confessed, and been absolved, then that too should be made known publicly, as the sin was public and caused grave scandal to the faithful.

The Distinction Between Public and Private Sin
This reflects a crucial and often misunderstood distinction in Catholic moral teaching between private sin and public sin:

  • Private sin is known only to the individual (or a few), and its harm is primarily internal—against one’s own soul and relationship with God. These sins are rightly confessed in the secrecy of the confessional, where grace heals in silence.
  • Public sin, however, is committed openly or is widely known—especially by those in positions of visibility or influence. Its effects are external and communal: it wounds the unity of the Church, confuses the faithful, and leads others into error by scandal—that is, the sin of causing others to stumble (cf. Matt. 18:6).

Scandal and the Duty of Correction
Scandal, in Catholic teaching, is not merely about causing offense. It is about causing spiritual harm by leading others to believe that sin is acceptable. When a public figure who claims to be Catholic knowingly promotes abortion or euthanasia, and suffers no ecclesial consequence, the result is a false witness—one that suggests Catholic doctrine can be disregarded without penalty.

Answering Objections: Is Public Reproof Uncharitable?
Some argue that it is uncharitable or unjust to publicly call out these MPs. But this objection misunderstands the nature of mercy, correction, and authority.

Catholic tradition, Scripture, and canon law are united on this point: public sin requires public correction. As St. Paul exhorts, “Them that sin, reprove before all: that the rest also may have fear” (1 Tim 5:20). St. Thomas Aquinas affirms that where scandal arises from public sin, it must be corrected publicly, lest others be led into the same error (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 33, a. 7).

Charity is not the avoidance of discomfort. It is the willing of the true good of the other. To allow Catholic legislators to persist in sacrilege while maintaining public communion with the Church is not merciful—it is cruel.

The Role of Bishops and the Laity
That is why Canon 915 obliges ministers of Holy Communion to withhold the Sacrament from those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin.” This is not a punishment but a safeguard—for the dignity of the Eucharist, the integrity of the Church, and the salvation of the person in error.

The bishops of the Church bear a particular responsibility here. As successors of the Apostles, they are not only private pastors but public guardians of the faith. When they fail to admonish Catholic public officials who defy the Church in grave matters, they share in the scandal by omission.

The laity, too, are not exempt. The Confiteor reminds each of us that sin—even when secret—has consequences for others. When the faithful fail to insist on coherence between public action and professed belief, they allow falsehood to masquerade as fidelity.

The Goal: Restoration Through Visible Repentance
Yet the goal is not exclusion but reconciliation. The Church longs to welcome back the sinner—but repentance must come first. The Confiteor ends not in condemnation but in hope: “Pray for me to the Lord our God.”

If any of the MPs who voted against life and truth were to repent, confess, and publicly amend their error, the Church should receive them with joy. But that repentance must be visible. For where the sin was public, the healing must be public too.

Conclusion: A Call to Fidelity and Courage
In our time, the Church must recover the clarity of her Tradition and the courage of her saints. Only then can she speak with authority to a world that has forgotten what sin is, and no longer believes in grace.

First published on Selsey Substack

  1. Code of Canon Law, Canon 915: “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
  2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1385: “Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.”
  3. For the list of MPs and their votes, see The Catholic Herald, 6 July 2025.
  4. On the nature and necessity of public penance, cf. Dom Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, and Fr. Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace, vol. II.
  5. On the distinction between public and private sin, cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 33, a. 7.
  6. On scandal and its gravity, cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§2284–2287.
  7. On ecclesial correction as an act of charity, cf. Pope St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, and St. Catherine of Siena, Letters, esp. to Pope Gregory XI.

Open Letter to Zöe Franklin MP on the Assisted Dying Bill

Published on by TheOldRomanLeave a comment

On 24 June 2025, Liberal Democrat MP for Guildford, Zöe Franklin, gave an interview to Premier Christian News explaining her decision to support the Assisted Dying Bill, which recently passed its Third Reading in the House of Commons. In that interview, Ms Franklin described the Bill as “safe, compassionate and carefully regulated,” and stated that her Christian faith informed her vote. She expressed the view that God “is not content” with the suffering of those unable to access assisted death and argued that such inequality is unjust.

In response, Archbishop Jerome Lloyd of the Old Roman Apostolate has issued an open letter, published below, addressing the moral, theological, and legislative concerns raised by Ms Franklin’s position.

The Archbishop’s letter engages not only with the doctrinal incompatibility of assisted suicide with the Christian faith, but also with the serious legal, medical, and ethical implications of the Bill. Drawing on official statements from multiple Royal Colleges—including the Physicians, Psychiatrists, General Practitioners, Pathologists, and Surgeons—the letter underscores widespread professional alarm about the Bill’s deficiencies in safeguarding the vulnerable, ensuring clinical oversight, and preserving the integrity of end-of-life care.

The letter also reflects the consistent moral teaching of the Church on the sanctity of human life, the nature of true compassion, and the dangers of allowing emotionalism to guide public policy.

This intervention is part of the Old Roman Apostolate’s broader mission to defend the dignity of the human person and bear witness to perennial Catholic teaching in the public square. It is offered in a spirit of respectful engagement, pastoral concern, and moral clarity.

FranklinAD260525SELDownload