English Bishops Soften Vatican's Moral Line

The Catholic Church in England and Wales will today soften the harsh moralistic language of the Vatican in setting out its most comprehensive moral guidelines for many years to the faithful on how they should live their lives.

The document, called Cherishing Life, approved by the Church's bishops, refrains from the sort of blunt language in which last year the Vatican described gay partnerships as evil. The English bishops say instead that ho mosexual orientation must never be considered sinful or evil in itself -just so long as it is not sexually expressed.

The moderate language reflects the doubts many English Catholics feel about the Vatican's uncompromising stance on some issues of personal morality. Although the Church notionally has 4.3 million members in England and Wales, only about a quarter are regular churchgoers.

Cherishing Life restates the Church's opposition to abortion, divorce, contraception, cloning, embryo research and extra-marital sex but mostly in less censorious terms than hitherto. It suggests there is a difference in degree between preventive contraception measures and those such as the morning after pill which abort conception. But it still says that contraception places a barrier between partners and "suppresses the healthy working of the body".

The 103-page document admits that the Church does not have answers to all the questions of modern living.

It warns: "One should not ... look to the Church to produce concrete answers for every practical question. Priests and bishops will not always be so expert as to have a ready answer to every problem (not even every grave problem)."

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the archbishop of Westminster and leader of the Church, writing in today's Guardian, says: "Each of us is on a journey, a journey back to God. That journey should be exhilarating and life-giving. It also requires us to make difficult moral choices... our overriding obligation is to safeguard and promote the inherent and equal dignity of all human life from its natural beginning to its natural ending."

The document criticises the "me-too" society, the blame culture and social pressures, particularly on the young, to be sexually active and self-conscious about their body image.

It insists that sex should only take place within a married relationship, calls for self-control and chastity, and argues that unmarried couples should not automatically receive the same privileges and benefits as married partners.

The harshest language though continues to be directed at abortion. The document describes the 1967 Abortion Act as having a corrupting effect on British society and its medical profession: "Many thousands of children a year, while still in their mothers' wombs, are being killed not through incompetence or isolated malice, but because of a corrupting ideology."

The bishops, who seven years ago produced a document on social teaching which placed strictures on politicians, are critical of current governments, saying their response to terrorism must be based on justice and law, not on vengeance.

"Overcoming war demands establishing a just interna tional order and building up of a culture in which life is cherished," the document says.

Martin Pendergast, of the Roman Catholic caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, said last night: "The bishops are playing games with words. We are pleased they have moderated the harsh, intemperate, language of the Vatican but they are not prepared to stick their heads above the parapet by challenging it."