That’s the motion that was debated last week in London, at an event hosted by the Spectator and held at the Royal Geographical Society. And guess what — “the 700-strong sell-out audience voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion”!
Excerpt from The Catholic Herald:
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, author Piers Paul Read and Dom Anthony Sutch, former headmaster of Downside, spoke for the motion. Speaking against were the Anglican Bishop Lord Harries of Pentregarth, Labour MP Stephen Pound and journalist Matthew Parris. Broadcaster Andrew Neil was chairman.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor argued that the Reformation had cut England off from its traditional culture, while it was the layman who defended Catholic moral teaching.
Mr Read said: “Recently the Conservative Party has woken up to the damage done to England’s social fabric by the increasing number of broken homes. There is much cant about protecting the rights of children but, as Pope John Paul II said, the right of a child to be brought up under one roof by its natural parents should be seen as one of the most fundamental of all human rights. And there is no doubt that it would be if children had the vote. But children do not have the vote. They have no lobby. No Stonewall. No feminist MPs.”
The wretchedness of broken homes, he said, “is cascading from generation to generation”.
