Jan. 31, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Britain’s leading Catholic prelate has lodged a strong complaint against a new policy that will require Catholic adoption agencies to give equal service to same-sex couples, charging that “religious conscience is overruled by regulation.”
 
 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster expressed a “deep sense of disappointment” that Prime Minister Tony Blair did not “respond more flexibly” to his plea that Catholic agencies should be exempt from the anti-discrimination provisions of the Equality Act.
 
 Writing in the London Daily Telegraph, the cardinal expressed some gratitude for a 2-year period that will allow Church-run agencies to adapt their policies to the new rules. However, he indicated that Catholic agencies would not act in violation of Church teachings.
 
 “But I want to make it clear that our agencies must be able to act with integrity and in accordance with Catholic principles and should not be asked to do otherwise,” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote. Last week Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham had warned that Catholic adoption services might be closed down by the new national policy.
 Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor stopped short of arguing against passage of the Equality Act, which will be brought before Parliament in April. In fact that cardinal seemed to accept the fundamental purpose of the government legislation, saying that it was a response to “a proper desire to remove hurtful homophobia and permit adoption by same-sex couples.”
 
 However, the cardinal observed that the government’s policy is based on an assumption that homosexual couples can serve as well as heterosexual married couples in raising children. “This, I believe, is far removed from the instinct and conviction of most people,”
 
 the Catholic prelate argued. “Most would seem to hold to the standard view that a child flourishes best in the care of a father and mother, just as within that relationship is a child conceived.”
 Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor added that support for married couples as the ideal parents is not a peculiarly Catholic position, but is “shared by all the major religious faiths in this country.”
 
 The cardinal said that the government’s policy, by putting national regulations in opposition to the moral principles of some individuals, could have the effect of eliminating faith-based groups. The legislation, he said, seemed to indicated that “any organization that is not prepared to conform to this new normality has not part to play in this public service.”