One Law for All will host a seminar to explore the terms of the Children Act and whether these are compatible with the tenets and practice of sharia law. It will look at the protections provided to children by the provisions of the Children Act and ask if children in Britain, by virtue of their parents’ religion or culture, are at risk of being denied these protections. In addition, One Law for All will provide information on Catholic Canon Law and how this has been used to facilitate the continued abuse of children in Catholic institutions. Speakers include: Sue Cox, Survivors Voice Europe; Anne Marie Hutchinson, Dawson Cornwell Solicitors; Maryam Namazie, One Law for All; Diana Nammi, Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation; and Yasmin Rehman, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Domestic Violence Intervention Project. The seminar will be chaired by Anne Marie Waters, One Law for All.
Seminar on Sharia Law and the Children Act
22 November 2011
18.30-20.30 hours
Brockway Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Entry fee: £8 Statutory organisations; £5 individuals; £2.50 student/unwaged
Registration can be done on the day from 18.00 hours.
The position of the Catholic Church is, and always has been, that clerics, not just priests, but anyone in Holy Orders, is subject only to Canon Law and not to Civil Law. This is why the Pope inveighs against secularism. A secular society will not accept that. He wants to return to the days when a ploughman could be hanged for stealing a shilling and a cleric fined a shilling for killing a ploughman.
You can see this in the directives regarding child abuse, priests must comply with the law of the land, but they must comply *fully* with Canon Law.
I’m a bit far from London, but this:
sounds interesting. Does One Law for All have any reading on it?
Especially in Ireland, I’ve had the impression that clerics were considered to be subject to Catholic law, and therefore pretty much exempt from the law of the land. I still wonder how much of this was official, and to what extent the government has always stuck its head in the sand where transgressions by church officials were suspected.