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Acceptance of same-sex marriage will cause trials for English Catholics, bishop warns

CWN - February 06, 2013

The legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Britain will but “intolerable moral pressures” on Catholics, an English bishop has predicted.

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth said that Catholics working in medicine and social services would be first to feel the pressures of conforming to the new policy, with Catholic schoolteachers soon to follow. He said that as the Catholic conception of marriage becomes more radically different from the government’s notions, it is possible that “the Church will be forced to withdraw from the civil registration of marriages.”

Archbishop Peter Smith added that in the debate leading up to approval of same-sex marriage by the House of Commons, it was evidence that “the government has not thought through a number of profound problems” raised by the legislation.

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