Viewpoint

Every child born in the UK, whatever their circumstances, is a member of our society. Society has a choice - we can do our best to support and nurture those children, to help them grow into healthy, happy adults, or we can turn our backs on them, allow them to struggle and then condemn them if their adult lives do not meet with our approval. This month marks the seventh anniversary of the two chil... Read More

Amidst the rush of parish life there isn't usually much time to peruse Vatican documents. Nevertheless, I found time this Saturday, in the lull in the weekend storm (between morning confessions, homily-writing and evening Mass) to read through the recently published declaration, Dignitas Infinita, from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The first thing that strikes me is the catalogue of... Read More

Pilgrimage: The Road to North Wales is currently airing on BBC 2 and IPlayer. In a tried-and-tested format over six series, three hour-long episodes follow seven British celebrities from a variety of faith and cultural backgrounds as they traverse, on foot and by bus, the North Wales Pilgrims Way from Flint to Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli). The premise behind the original series was to place individ... Read More

Lord (Alf) Dubs fought back tears as he spoke in the House of Lords on 2 February during the Holocaust Remembrance debate. He had been referring to One Life, the film recently in cinemas, and starring Anthony Hopkins, about the 1939 evacuation of children from the Nazi threat in Czechoslovakia. Aged six, Alf Dubs had been on one of those Kindertransport trains from Prague. Lord Dubs had other reas... Read More

In the wake of several large donors withdrawing their support for UNRWA Jonathan Cook examines the history of the organisation. He writes on X (formerly Twitter): 'UNRWA is separate from the UN's main refugee agency, the UNHCR, and deals only with Palestinian refugees. Although Israel does not want you to know it, the reason for there being two UN refugee agencies is because Israel and its wester... Read More

"An excoriating picture of a shamefully dysfunctional political culture". Not a comment on the recent ITV series Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office. This is Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, on the back cover of Rory Stewart's Politics on the Edge: A Memoir from Within Jonathan Cape 2023. Yet the book exposes the profound weaknesses in governance that enabled the Post Office scandal.... Read More

Immigration, like a high-scoring Scrabble letter, has become the 'Q' stuck in the Prime Minister's hand as his opponents play their last letters to end the game. Sunak's promises to control immigration, made ever more forcefully but never kept, have become a liability, a pledge too far. His government's anti-immigration policies don't acknowledge the realities of international migration. This is t... Read More

The haunting images of Palestinian babies, children, women, and men from Gaza have become deeply etched into our minds and souls. They are repulsive to us as emotional beings, shaking us to the core of our existence and leaving us in tatters. These visuals starkly portray the depths of human cruelty, our fragile hope, unlikely sense of recovery, enduring sense of hopelessness, and imminent fear of... Read More

Consultant orthopaedic surgeon, author and founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians, Dr Swee Ang Chai writes: On this Christmas morning, I was thinking about what Christmas means to all of us who are deeply shaken and broken by the brutal massive killing of innocent lives in Gaza and the total destruction of homes and all institutions for human survival like hospitals, schools, generators, churches... Read More

The BBC Reith lectures began under Atlee's Labour Government in 1948 - alongside incidentally the National Health Service. It was a time of proud and creative post-war nationalism when the idea of public services that aimed to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation, and its health, had traction. Public sentiment was much influenced by the recent solidarity of wartime and shared ex... Read More

In a week in which the British government has introduced various schemes to discourage foreign workers and students from coming to the UK, and draconian plans to send refugees seeking asylum off to Rwanda, Canon Rob Esdaile, Parish Priest of Woking & Knaphill writes in his parish newsletter: "At a time when much political discourse seems to regard the presence of migrant workers and refugees ... Read More

The manipulation of public anxiety about immigration has become an important element in Party politics here in Britain. With the economy flat-lining, against a background of a million job vacancies, debilitating understaffing in the NHS and social care, hostility to immigration seems odd. But at a time of economic distress, an appeal to xenophobia, subtle or open, and the stoking of anger against ... Read More

In 1962, when I was 29, I was very concerned about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US and Soviet Union were, it seemed, on the brink of starting a nuclear war. Luckily, neither President Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev thought war was either necessary or winnable, and with some help from Pope John XXIII peace prevailed. Now, 61 years later, we are faced with another catastrophic threat: the destruction... Read More

"A completely extraordinary thing to do, to effectively overrule a decision on the facts, on the evidence, by the highest court in the land." That is Lord Sumption who served on the Supreme Court from 2012-2018 describing the Prime Minister's proposed emergency legislation on offshoring asylum processing to Rwanda. "With our new treaty Rwanda is safe", Rishi Sunak declared responding to the Supr... Read More