From the editor’s desk

Faith's proper role in society

The High Court’s ruling in favour of the charity Catholic Care on Wednesday may have implications far beyond the Dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam to which it directly applies, and far beyond the issue of whether Catholic Care is obliged by law to consider gay couples as suitable adopters of children. If the obligation stands, the charity would either have to withdraw from adoption work or sever its formal links with the Catholic Church. But Mr Justice Briggs has told the Charity Commissioners that they were wrong, in refusing Catholic Care an exemption, not to take into account the public interest. Once that has been made a criterion, Catholic Care’s case for an exemption becomes much stronger, for its expertise in finding homes for hard-to-place children (of any faith) is clearly of public benefit.

This ruling, which was unexpected, raises the question of whether other Catholic children’s societies were too hasty in breaking their ties with the Church or in giving up their adoption work, and whether they received sound legal advice. They were no doubt guided by the fact that the Catholic Church lost the political ­battle to have such an exemption explicitly enshrined in law.

The judge has in effect ruled that the law does not quite have the effect the Government intended it to have. It remains to be seen whether ministers have the stomach – or the time, with a general election imminent – to go back to Parliament for an amendment. And the Charity Commission could still turn Catholic Care down, though in the light of the judge’s decision that would seem perverse. A far wiser course would be to look again at the whole issue of public funding for faith-based activities, which covers not just adoption work but church schools, and indeed any new relationship a future government might want to establish with non-governmental or “third sector” organisations like faith communities, in other areas of work.

Both Labour and the Conservatives talk about giving them an increased role in the provision of public services, paid for at least in part by the taxpayer. The assumption in the case of adoption services was that if the Government pays the piper, it can call the tune. However, the recent concession by the Government to allow state-funded Catholic schools to teach sex education in “accordance with their ethos” may signal belated recognition that to force a third-sector service-deliverer to abandon the values it holds dear would call into question its raison d’être and hence its very existence. Why have Catholic schools at all if they are not allowed to pass on the teachings of the Catholic faith?

The Government’s mistake has been to treat faith-based ­agencies, whether schools, welfare societies or other bodies, not as equal partners but as sub-contractors. That is emphatically not the right relationship between the state and civil society. The time has come to assert that while the Government may provide the financial capital, it is faith-based institutions that provide the moral and social capital. That is what best serves the public interest, and it demands an equal, not a subservient, relationship. As the Prime Minister says in his article on page 9, Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain in September will help to “highlight the role of faith in strengthening and enriching civil society”. But it cannot only be on the Government’s terms.