Catholic Union Deputy Director, James Somerville-Meikle, writes:
A large part of the Catholic Union’s work is keeping track of developments in Westminster.
But increasingly it seems that what happens at the local and international level can have just as much of an impact on the lives of Catholics as anything that happens in Parliament. Recent developments at the United Nations are a case in point.
Earlier this week, the Government introduced regulations that would bring about compulsory sex education in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris MP, said he was forced to act on the basis of a UN report from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women which recommended that “compulsory and comprehensive” sex education be introduced in Northern Ireland.
Earlier this month, another UN Committee recommended that schools in England should be banned from admitting pupils based on religion, affectively ending faith schools as we know them. The Government has yet to respond to the recommendations published by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, but the National Secular Society has already expressed its delight at the report.
It’s clear that as Catholics we need to pay greater attention to the work of international bodies like the UN, otherwise we risk sleep walking into a world where we cannot practise our faith.