Theresa May is effectively “Britain’s first Catholic prime minister”, the former education secretary Michael Gove has claimed.
In an article for the Times, Mr Gove, MP for Surrey Heath, said Theresa May was “an Anglo-Catholic rather than a Roman Catholic, but no less a Catholic for that”.
Mr Gove said that Mrs May, though an Anglican and the daughter of a vicar, drew deeply on Catholic social teaching in her approach to her office.
Mr Gove argued that the strength of this Catholic influence was shown when she appeared on the Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, and chose two hymns including Therefore We, Before Him Bending, which is often sung during Benediction. He also noted that Mrs May had given up her favourite crisps for Lent, which seemed especially typical of “Catholic practice”.
Mr Gove said that Mrs May’s politics could best be understood in the light of the Church’s social teaching. He wrote that Catholic doctrine, like Mrs May’s “rhetoric and policy conversation”, emphasises “the cultivation of virtue rather than the exercise of liberty or the accumulation of prosperity as mankind’s goal.”
Mr Gove observed that Mrs May frequently appeals to the common good. Moreover, “her insistence on ‘an economy that works for everyone’ and referencing of ‘ordinary working families’ are straightforward expressions of the desire in Catholic social thought to view the economy through the prism of human flourishing, not statistical performance”.
The Labour peer Lord Glasman argued in the Catholic Herald last year that Mrs May’s thought had many resonances with Catholic teaching. A “significant” example, he said, was her support for workers on company boards. Mrs May has since retreated on this proposal.
Catholic pharmacists ‘could be forced to disobey conscience’
The bishops’ conference of England and Wales has said that British pharmacists could be forced to dispense lethal drugs, including abortifacient contraception pills, under plans which may prohibit conscientious objection.
The General Pharmaceutical Council, the regulatory body that sets professional standards for the industry throughout Britain, has announced that it wishes to change “the expectations of pharmacy professionals” when their “religion, personal values or beliefs” might affect their work, “and shift the balance in favour of the needs and rights of the person in their care”.
David Jones, the director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said the proposals risked “eviscerating the profession of concern for the genuine health interests of people using the pharmacy”. If assisted suicide were to be legalised, he added, pharmacists might be obliged to give lethal drugs to customers who wished to kill themselves.
A change could also “create an atmosphere that is hostile to religious people in particular”, Mr Jones said.
A consultation period ended last week.
Ten thousand youths pray at Wembley
Around 10,000 young Catholics gathered at Wembley Arena on Saturday for the third Flame Congress.
Thousands of youngsters took part in Eucharistic Adoration, watched musical performances and listened to speakers including Cardinals Vincent Nichols and Charles Bo.
The event, organised by the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation (CYMFed), was first held in 2012.
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