Every now and then we are regaled with an item of foreign news calculated to raise our spirit at this time of a tottering eurozone.

A recent press release proudly announced that the NHS in the UK would be funded for fertility/IVF services requested by gay and lesbian couples living in England and Wales.

This would mean a substantial increase in such services as artificial insemination donor, IVF involving surrogate mothers, sperm donations to lesbian couples, etc.,

The permutations and combinations of techniques used in assisted human reproduction are numerous and come at no mean cost to the state. The failure rate is not negligible nor should one set aside the anxieties suffered by the persons concerned.

All this is anathema to Catholic teaching

The great idea of a national health service is thus being seriously dehumanised and debased, a result of a misguided, totally secular concept of the state which excludes the existence of God.

It is a path that leads to self-destruction of what has been termed an over indulged behemoth, which the NHS is becoming.

We would do well to avoid going down the same road, one full of risk and peril of added human misery.