Catholics cannot claim to be true to their faith if they do not support Church teaching on abortion, Bishop Michael Campbell of Lancaster has said. Abortion is a “foundational issue”, Bishop Campbell wrote on his blog. “Sadly, the price of admission into mainstream British life has meant that we somehow keep the Catholic brand name and tribal loyalty, but are content to live a mix of nostalgia and generic good will and ‘keep our heads down’ in the public sphere,” he said. True Catholics, on the other hand, have a duty to “sanctify and humanise” the country, and lead it towards Church teaching.” This week, the bishops of England, Wales and Scotland issued a rare joint statement to mark the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act. The bishops describe every abortion as a “tragedy” and lament the 200,000 terminations that happened in 2015 alone. They criticise the fact that Britain sometimes allows abortions up to birth, and said that doctors and nurses “face increasing difficulty in being able to combine their dedicated professional work with their personal conviction”. In his blogpost, Bishop Campbell remarked that “Some Catholics – including some periodicals and newspapers who claim to use that name – seem simply embarrassed by the abortion issue. “The abortion struggle gets in the way of their natural political alliances. Others don’t really agree with the Church’s teaching, or don’t accept the personhood of the unborn child. “Others just want a respectable way to explain away this issue and get on with what they regard as the ‘real’ work of the Church.” Bishop Campbell concluded by saying that overturning the Abortion Act is achievable, although it could take decades because it challenges the “moral premises” of society.