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Balls Reaffirms Church Schools Will Be Forced to Teach Children to Get... : 8th Mar 10
Damian Thompson of the UK’s Telegraph newspaper has criticised the “astonishingly ignorant and sneering exchange” between Ed Balls and John Humphrys as they discussed Catholic schools on a recent “Today” programme on BBC radio.
Mr Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools, and Families, confirmed that the sex education bill—now before Parliament—will force Catholic schools to tell children how to “access” contraception and abortions.
Humphrys, meanwhile, criticised Balls for a Government-backed amendment that lets faith schools set out their own teachings in addition to (not instead of) Balls’s own abortion propaganda. “The level of ignorance of Catholic teaching shown by both men was stunning” Thompson remarked. “And I genuinely think it was ignorance, because neither Balls nor Humphrys knew the name of the Archbishop of Westminster. Both called him ‘Archbishop Nichol’.
Meanwhile, where was the Catholic spokesman to put the Church’s side of the story? “Archbishop Nichol”: not available. Bishop Malcolm McMahon, who holds the education brief in the Bishops’ Conference: not available. Oona Stannard, head of the Catholic Education Service (CES): not available.
There is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that the CES and other Church spokesmen are deliberately lying low, in order to help Balls get his amendment through. But the amendment is worthless. In its final weeks, this dying government is forcing Catholic schools to provide information on how girls can kill the babies in their womb; it is boasting about how St Thomas More School in Bedford is already providing ‘non-judgmental’ information about abortions.
And the reaction from the Church, and the head teacher of the school in question? Silence”. Telegraph Blogs. February 23.
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