After pouring cold water on it for months, it appears the Government accepts the single currency will go ahead on time at the end of the century.. Mr Major now faces the prospect of admitting that his hopes of beginning to lift the ban by the end of the year have been dashed.Conservative MPs were pessimistic about the chances of lifting the ban before the end of the century. “There is a growing realisation that it doesn’t matter what we do – they are going to keep that ban on until the last cow has died from BSE in the year 2001 or 2002,” said Sir Jerry Wiggin, Tory chairman of the Commons select committee on agriculture.Sir Edward Heath, the former prime minister, said Britain was in difficulties about beef because “most of the other countries are so fed up with us”.In his Zurich speech Mr Rifkind will warn that an EU-divided between a “small elite” of single-currency states and the rest is “not what the founding fathers” of Europe had in mind.His words go beyond previous warnings about a single currency. Clearly exacerbated by London’s attempt to renege on a deal hailed by John Major in June as a “triumph”, EU ministers dismissed as “nothing new” studies showing that the disease will die out by 2001 regardless of the targeted cull; the basis for Mr Hogg’s plea for a review.Some even warned of financial retaliation if the cull is ditched with a block on thepounds 300m the EU is expected to pay this year to cover the cost of destroying cattle over the age of 30 months.Downing Street sources indicated Britain would not go it alone, by unilaterally reducing the cull, and John Major is expected to call an urgent meeting of ministers over the crisis.The Government’s business managers have advised the Cabinet they are unlikely to get a vote for the expanded cull through Parliament.
Stepping up British confrontation in advance of next month’s special Dublin summit, designed to press ahead with further integration, Mr Rifkind will say in Zurich: “We should not proceed down a path of integration faster or further than our people are prepared to go.
“Those who neglect this maxim fall into the trap of seeing Europe in terms of a state: of thinking that we can better achieve our common goals simply by projecting the aspirations and ambitions of individual nations on to an EU canvas.”The tone and tenor of Mr Rifkind’s speech will delight Tory Euro-sceptics in the run-up to next month’s party conference – adding to the heightened sense of confrontation raised by yesterday’s rejection by EU ministers of Britain’s call for a reduction in the selective cattle cull, aimed at eradicating BSE.That decision left the Government with a stark choice: defy Brussels and unleash a new beef war, or risk a damaging Commons defeat on the slaughter policy.Douglas Hogg, the agriculture minister, dispatched to Brussels to sound out European colleagues on a cut in the planned cull of 140,000 animals, was sent home with a humiliating rebuff. “Priests would face a real dilemma, given the old joke of the eligible curate, chased by all the girls because he is so attractive. Would they wear placards when they arrived in a parish, declaring: ‘I’ve taken a vow of celibacy. Girls stay away’?”Perhaps Loaded would provide some advice on how to avoid the unwelcome attentions of the opposite sex.. The Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, will warn tonight that a single European currency could create a dangerous and semi-permanent split in the European Union.
“Would they have no choice other than to join a religious order which retained the vow of celibacy?” says Nicholas Coote. It could create enormous personal tensions.”Those priests who voluntarily chose to remain celibate might also have difficulties. In the Orthodox and Eastern Uniate churches, men are permitted to marry only prior to ordination. “If existing priests were excluded from the dispensation,” says Fr Gaine, “you could imagine large presbyteries having a young priest with a family and an older one not allowed to marry. But it’s too late.’ I can see some very awkward situations.”A big question would be whether all priests would be allowed to be married or only future candidates.
“Imagine the distress of those who felt they had missed the boat,” says Nicholas Coote, assistant general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. “How do you think elderly priests would feel if all the clergy were let off the celibacy hook? You can imagine a priest thinking: ‘I’m 78 and I have spent 58 years of my life sticking to the rule of celibacy Now I’m being told to go out and find a pretty girl. The Anglican model shows that as women’s earning power rises, marriage is increasingly subsidising Anglican clerics rather than draining their meagre resources – many Anglican vicars have spouses who earn far more than they do.However, as Cardinal Basil Hume said yesterday, why should marriage be any easier a vocation than celibacy? A change in the rules would be bound to produce clerical divorces and questions of remarriage, all thorny issues which have dogged Anglicanism but which Catholicism has been spared.The reaction of older clergy to the proposed change would be significant. That figure disguises an even more marked decline in the sales of traditional home-grown vegetables such as cauliflower, parsnips, sprouts and cabbage, whose consumption has fallen in the face of competition from more profitable “exotic” imports like rocket salad and baby sweetcorn, stocked mainly by the bigger stores.Own label is king.
The Catholic church became worried about dynastic tendencies among clergy who were passing on church property to their children and so opted for the monastic model of priesthood.But the financial difficulties of abandoning celibacy may be diminishing. Catholic priests often die before they reach retirement (at 75), and if they make it to that age their pension is far less than those of their Anglican equivalents (who receive more than pounds 8,000 a year). If celibacy was made optional, provision would also have to be made for widows.All of this recalls the original reason why celibacy became the norm after the 12th century. But it all amounts to far less than the sums on which Anglican clergy already struggle – the minimum stipend for an incumbent vicar is pounds 13,250 with the vicarage thrown in.The Catholic Church would have to find large sums if their men of the cloth were to support a family. A child, according to a recent survey, can cost pounds 20,000 in its first five years, an expense which alone would swallow up a priest’s entire current stipend.Then there would be the question of pensions. Catholic priests are poorer than church mice, paid pounds 5,000 a year on average.
