THE Bishop of Paisley is to hold clear-the-air talks with a leading member of the Humanist Society Scotland (HSS) after accusing the group of “gratuitous attacks” on Catholics.
Bishop John Keenan plans to meet with the society’s campaigns and communications manager Fraser Sutherland after the pair became embroiled in a row over religious representation on local authority education boards.
The Humanist spokesman recently described the system as “outdated, undemocratic and archaic”, and spoke of bigoted anti-LGBT activists’ on education committees in an article by The Herald’s sister paper The Sunday Herald.
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This led to Bishop Keenan saying the HSS were a “tiny” group who only existed in the pages of newspapers and questioning their right to make statements on how the public are represented on such bodies.
In a post on social media, he said: “Are [the HSS] really entitled to lecture on what is or is not real public representation? Have they asked Catholic citizens up and down the country, as well as officials in local government who work well and effectively together with Church reps, if they would prefer their boards to have no input from Catholic schools reps?”
The Bishop added: “When you look at the substance of their agenda and output should they really not be called the ‘anti-religion society’ and, would it not be more honest to the general public, and to themselves, to just call themselves that?”
This lead to a call from the HSS to hold a meeting where differences could be thrashed out, to which the Bishop has now agreed.
However, in a letter agreeing to talks, he said he feels “routinely in the position of having to defend our Church frankly from what I would say are lazy and quite gratuitous attacks on Catholics in Scotland and their beliefs from members of the HSS.”
Bishop Kennan added: “The context of all of this is the general experience of Catholics fairly broadly that the HSS feels some kind of need to ‘take a pop’ at religion in many of its outputs.
“In that sense we naturally conclude that you are as exercised to do away with the place of religion in Scottish civic society as you are to advance the cause of authentic humanism.
“I, more than anyone, would be very encouraged if the HSS were considering a fairer and more positive appraisal of the contribution of faith communities to Scottish civic society and so open up a new chapter of their due respect for religions in Scotland.”
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Fraser Sutherland
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Mr Sutherland said he was looking forward to meeting the bishop and discussing the issues.
He said his original comments where in reference to the appointment of a Christian Evangelical to a South Lanarkshire education committee rather than to the Catholic Church.
He said: “Campaigning for a secular state and the removal of privileges in law for certain religious institutions is not ‘anti-religious.
“Humanists seek a country, and indeed a world, where all individuals, no matter their faith, belief or none, have their human right to freedom of religion and belief equally respected in the eyes of the law.
“Humanism is also significantly more than just advocating a separation of church and state. It is a legally recognised belief, or as some of our members would refer to an ethical life stance, that has a core set of values based around reason, compassion and community.”
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