To reject anyone is not Christian, says Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury

Here the Rt Rev Mark Davies, in his own words, sets out his view of the Church and the family in modern society:

"In the Shropshire Star you may have seen a startling headline on Monday, 'Call for Church to Reject Gay People'.

The article concerned a letter sent to all the parishes in the Shrewsbury Diocese last Sunday.

I want to say first and foremost that the Catholic Church does not and has never "rejected" people who experience same-sex attraction.

My pastoral letter on marriage and the family ( available on the Shrewsbury Diocesan website www.dioceseofshrewsbury.org) reflected on the recent meeting of bishops with Pope Francis in Rome.

Charles Darwin's masterpiece The Origin Of Species has been named as the book which has had the second greatest influence in shaping today's society.

However, the final word, it seems, still belongs with God.

For the Bible has topped the list of most influential works, commissioned by the Folio Society.

Its survey placed the Bible in front of Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life – to give its full title.

The work, published on November 24 1859, caused a sensation by setting out Shrewsbury-born Darwin's theory of evolution, and debate is still raging.

The third book listed in the survey is Professor Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, first published in 1988.

Professor Hawking soon found himself on the best-seller lists and his work has gone on to sell over 10 million copies – although how many of those readers made it through to the final page and understood what they had read – is unknown.

Fiction also made the top 10, with Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's prophetic, dystopian novel about a society under surveillance, coming fifth.

Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill A Mockingbird, about racism in the American South, was seventh.

The top 10 also featured Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica in sixth place and the Koran appeared in eighth place.

It was followed by The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith's seminal work on economics, and The Double Helix by James Watson, on the discovery of the structure of DNA.

While Northerners voted for the Bible as their most important book (41per cent), Southerners opted for Darwin (37 per cent).

Tom Walker, the Folio Society's editorial director, said he was surprised to find that there was "relatively little on economics despite the financial climate and only two, overtly political, fiction titles in the list".

I wished in my letter to dispel any misleading impression that the Catholic Church was about to change her teaching following reports seen in the media; and to write with encouragement for families throughout the diocese in their witness to the Christian vision of marriage and family life.

The bishops had met from across the world to consider how to respond in support of people caught up in the crisis of marriage and the family.

The Church is, of course, global and the crisis of the family is experienced in some parts of the world in poverty, war or even violent persecution, but in our own land it is seen most often in the tragic break-down of families and in ideologies which challenge the concept of marriage itself.

My letter did not mention homosexuality and so you can imagine my surprise when such a headline appeared. To reject any person is contrary to Christian teaching.

The Church, in fact, explicitly teaches respect for people who experience same-sex attraction and urges all Christians to reject any form of unjust discrimination.

The headline had suggested I was teaching exactly the opposite of the Christian message.

In almost five years as a bishop I have not had any occasion to speak about homosexuality until today.

In the Church everyone is being called to repentance and renewal, no-one is ever rejected.

In a letter to bishops around the world we were reminded "the Church provides a badly-needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a 'heterosexual' or a 'homosexual' and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life."

All of us are created by love and for love. This authentic love imitates God's love which is unconditional, freely given and life-giving.

In promoting this vision of authentic love in marriage, family life and human sexuality the Church does not in any way denigrate us but speaks of our call to live so great a love.

Chastity is not a fashionable word in contemporary British society but it expresses how this love is lived.

Chastity involves not being controlled by our sexual drive but controlling our sexual drive so we can truly love.

In the Christian vision sexual relations belong to marriage where the truth of a couple's total self-giving and openness to the gift of children is expressed.

All Christians, whether married or unmarried, recognise their call to chastity.

The Church in her catechism speaks of a clear alternative: either we govern our passions and find peace or we let ourselves be dominated by them and become unhappy.

Christians see chastity as a gift of God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort but we are realistic in appreciating such integration requires renewed effort throughout our lives.

My letter on marriage and the family spoke of how we all share in this struggle for true love.

I wished to echo Pope Francis's words when he said at the end of the Family Synod last month: "And this is the Church . . . who is not afraid to roll up her sleeves to pour oil and wine on people's wound; who doesn't see humanity as a house of glass to judge or categorise people. This is the Church, One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and composed of sinners, needful of God's mercy.

"This is the Church, the true bride of Christ, who seeks to be faithful to her spouse and to her doctrine . . . the Church that has the doors wide open to receive the needy, the penitent, and not only the just or those who believe they are perfect!

"The Church that is not ashamed of the fallen brother and pretends not to see him, but on the contrary feels involved and almost obliged to lift him up and to encourage him to take up the journey again and accompany him toward a definitive encounter with her Spouse, in the heavenly Jerusalem."

The Gospel and the Church's teaching are demanding but are surely for our happiness, our everlasting happiness. It would be the ultimate failure for the Church to suggest anyone is excluded from this call.

If you wish to read the full text of my original pastoral letter, then it is available on the front page of the website for the Diocese of Shrewsbury at www.dioceseofshrewsbury.org"