Defending the Sacrament of Marriage in England - not so much. 'Passionate' about education and poverty - all over it.

So it goes with the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.

LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that the day after the departure of Pope Benedict XVI from Britain, his senior archbishop, the unofficial head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, told a BBC interviewer that the English bishops had supported legalizing homosexual civil partnerships. (Download the audio here)

Attempting to defend the Catholic hierarchy from accusations of being opposed to the homosexualist political agenda around the world, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster hastened to assure the BBC’s Huw Edwards, “That’s not true.

“In this country, we were very nuanced. We did not oppose gay civil partnerships. We recognized that in English law there might be a case for those. What we persistently said is that these are not the same as marriage.”

Nichols’ assertion that the existence of homosexual civil partnerships could be acceptable to Catholic teaching was belied by his own colleague, Archbishop Peter Smith, formerly of Cardiff and now of Southwark, who said at the time of the passage of the Civil Partnerships Bill, “The government has effectively established same-sex marriage in all but name.”

Tina Beattie, a Catholic academic known for her dissent from the Church’s teaching on abortion and marriage, said that it was remarkable that the pope used the example of the financial crisis, because “the Church usually interferes most vociferously” with British politics in the areas of sexual morality.

Again Nichols said, “It’s not true.”

“The times we interfere most in British politics are either to do with poverty or to do with education. The media is obsessed with certain questions. But if you want to know what we’re really passionate about, it’s about the fight against poverty and the education of young people.”

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