Davies to launch controversial LGBT group in Shrewsbury

THE DIOCESE of Shrewsbury plans to host a chapter of an apostolate for gay and lesbian people that promotes mandatory celibacy, write Rose Gamble and Liz Dodd.

Bishop Mark Davies said he was “actively seeking” to establish a local group of Courage International, an apostolate of the Catholic Church established in the US.  The diocese will be the first in England to host an official Courage chapter.

The group has been criticised for teaching that being gay is a struggle that must be overcome through penance and mandatory celibacy. Martin Pendergast, a member of the LGBT Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council, expressed concern over the group’s teaching. “They promote celibacy and have tended to suggest that homosexuality is a dysfunction of heterosexuality. This is not something that we agree with. Nor is it the official position of the Church,” he said.

The move came about after a visit to Shrewsbury Diocese in February by Courage International’s associate director, Fr Philip Bochanski. “We are not trying to fix or cure anybody, just trying to walk with them,” Fr Bochanski said at the time.

Meanwhile Bishop Davies told pro-life campaigners in Congleton, Cheshire, that the struggle to end abortion was comparable to struggles against slavery and Nazism. He told members of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children on Saturday that the 1967 Abortion Act was an “evil and misguided” law, and that conversion, one person at a time, was the only way to reverse it.