The Netherlands: renewed Catholic youth website Easier surfing, increased interactivity, renewed layout with multimedia products, articles, videos podcasts, communities and lively colours are the features of the websitehttp: www.jongkatholiek.nl/. The website was activated in 2005 with the purpose of collecting the voices of Dutch youth during the WYD in Cologne. The website rapidly became a place where the youth exchanged opinions, ideas and information regarding the Catholic world. According to Marian van Kampen, the website’s coordinator, "the community and the news were the initial objectives, but low visibility and difficult application hindered the development of the community project. Posting news items was a hard and perhaps useless job since the youth can access religious news items also elsewhere", she declared. Thus greater space has been devoted to the community, since "the new website is constantly updated and what happens in the community is always visible, with the possibility of following the debates. The activity agenda enables young people to follow the events of their neighbourhood and post their own activities. Newsfeed from http://www.katholieknederland.nl/ provides access to news items. A team of young volunteers is currently working on the project. Van Kampen hopes it will develop rapidly by "finding new items every day and working towards the objective of the youth: to bring together the youth and help them know Christ and His Church".England: equal opportunities, the doubts of the bishopsIn a document submitted to the Parliament Catholic Bishops of England and Wales conveyed their reservations on the new legislation on equal opportunities that is undergoing debate at the House of Commons. The new bill is bound to replace hundreds of minor regulations and European directives on gender, race, religion and age discrimination. The right to practice one’s own religion along with the right to defend different views caused controversial debate between Christian Churches and the State of England over the past years. Almost all Catholic Adoption Agencies were forced to shut down since the State, on whose funding they depended, prevented them from discriminating couples that adopt a child on the basis of gender, thus compelling Catholic Adoption agencies to consider gay couples eligible for adoption of a minor. Catholic Bishops voiced their concern over a norm included in the bill that would strip them from the right to select employees, except for priests and religion teachers. "The Church would find itself in the absurd position of not being able to leave out from an assignment, envisaging contact among the youth, a divorced and remarried candidate, thus giving life to two divided families within the same parish", the bishops wrote. The new legislation might even grant Church employees with the right to bring the Church to Court if offended by religious images affixed inside Catholic buildings. Scotland: national marriage preparation course The national program on preparation to marriage promoted by Scotland’s Bishops’ Conference will be presented during the festivity of Christ the King (November 22), the last Sunday before the Advent. "It’s a course that all dioceses can implement and adapt to individual needs", Paul Conroy, Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference told Catholic weekly "Tablet". "In recent years the Bishops were concerned over the fact that marriage preparation courses weren’t sufficiently focused on the sacrament of marriage". The new program was recently announced after Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Scottish bishops, asked the State to fund a marriage preparation course for all non-believing couples that don’t attend the Church course. Cardinal O’Brien claimed that part of the course’s costs would be refunded since a smaller number of couples would divorce. "We wish to have a national marriage preparation program and services in order to help those couples experiencing a moment of crisis to come to a reconciliation", His Eminence declared. "This must be financed by the State as a form of investment in future stability". In Scotland the Catholic Church provides for marriage preparation courses, but according to the Cardinal this possibility should be extended also to those who don’t go to church. According to His Eminence just like the state invests in strict driving tests in order to prevent accidents, with the same criteria it ought to fund a course preventing couples from divorcing.
