Serious issues are raised by the Government's proposals to forbid discrimination on the grounds of homosexuality, particularly as they are likely to impact on the work of church welfare agencies. The Catholic Church is not alone in finding a key requirement - that voluntary adoption agencies treat homosexual couples on the same basis as married heterosexuals - an uncomfortable challenge to its moral convictions.

Whether it can negotiate a workable compromise or whether this must inevitably be a fight to the last ditch is a moot point. The latter seems to be the view taken by the Archbishop of Birmingham, Mgr Vincent Nichols, who said in a sermon last week: "Those who are elected to fashion our laws are not elected to be our moral tutors. They have no mandate or competence to be so." Cooperation with Government across a whole range of welfare and educational activities, he said, was in jeopardy.

Not long afterwards, the Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland responded to a government consultation there about similar issues, but in a tone that invited dialogue and compromise. Maybe they expect religious bodies in the Province to be given exemptions from anti-discrimination requirements that the British Government is not proposing to allow on the British mainland, where the gay rights lobby is opposed to any such compromise with religious bodies and replies simply "then so be it" to the Catholic Church's threat to withdraw from handling adoption and fostering placements altogether - depriving some 200 children a year of their expert services.

There is a possible variation on this drastic course of action, which may not be practical but which would theoretically make sense - that Catholic agencies should revert to their original purpose of placing Catholic children with Catholic families, and cease to offer their expertise to the wider public. Obviously they could then apply stricter faith criteria to those they selected.

But this raises ...