Scottish Catholic Observer

Scotland for Marriage—an umbrella group, including the Catholic Church, wishing to protect marriage as a union between a man and a woman—is holding the 12-hour vigil at St Charles’ Church in Paisley on Friday March 23 from 7.00pm.

John Deighan, the Scottish Bishops’ parliamentary officer, said that vigil organisers were inspired to launch this initiative after one of the volunteers in the Catholic Parliamentary Office spoke of the experience in her own country of Kenya at a time of political unrest.

“She told us of how a bloodbath had been feared as different militias vied for power after an election,” he said. “In response Catholics started to hold prayer vigils where people would pray the rosary all night. It resulted in an unexpected peace in Kenya and we hope to have a similar impact on the war against the family that is presently being waged.

“As people of faith we know how important prayer is for all of our work. There is in Scotland just now what amounts to a spiritual blindness where many people cannot seem to tell right from wrong. We can disseminate information on marriage to parishes and to politicians but we need a good disposition of those who get that information and God’s grace is important for that.”

Friday’s vigil will be made up of talks, Rosary, stations of the cross, Eucharistic Adoration and meditation.

“We hope [this] will attract many people to join us for all or part of the vigil,” Mr Deighan added. “We also hope that others will take similar initiatives in their own parishes.”

The vigil follows last week’s publication of results from a new poll from ORB Opinion Research Business that showed 53 per cent of 1004 Scots surveys believed that same-sex couples ‘should not be allowed to redefine marriage for everyone else.’

The survey also revealed that 11 per cent of those polls believed that the move to legalise same-sex ‘marriage’ would discourage them from voting for Scottish independence in the future, while only 2 per cent of Scots would back independence if the ‘redefinition’ proposals were successful.