The Jesuit Refugee Service has condemned the “extraordinarily dangerous proposal” to send boats back across Channel. JRS UK said the proposal would mean “people will drown”. The Catholic charity spoke out about government proposals to send back small boats carrying refugees and migrants in the English Channel, after news that Border Force staff are being trained to employ “turn-around” tactics at sea under plans developed for two years. Sarah Teather, JRS director, said: “This is an extraordinarily dangerous proposal. If it is enacted, people will drown. And it contravenes the most basic principles of refugee protection, casting out people seeking asylum without even considering their claim. Rather than fixing the asylum system, the government appears to have decided we should not have one at all.”
Fr Michael Kirwan SJ (Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin) has succeeded Fr Ashley Beck as president of the Catholic Theological Association. Professor Stephen McKinney (School of Education, University of Glasgow) was elected Vice President at the annual conference, organised jointly with the Irish Theological Association for the first time, which took place online from 7 - 9 September. The theme was Eco-Theology: A New Heavens and a New Earth. Among other things, speakers focused on theological perspectives on the way in which human beings are affecting the planet, on how our theology of the Holy Spirit relates to the way we look at creation and our views of God’s immanence and the implications of creation ex nihilo. Eco-theology was examined in relation to spirituality and material culture. The co-operation with the ITA will continue and next year’s conference is due to take place at Maynooth from 5 - 8 September.
St Columba’s College in St Albans has become a co-educational school, after girls started in Reception, Prep 1, Prep 2 and the Lower Sixth on Monday 6 September. The independent Catholic day school announced its move to co-education last year and welcomed its first girls into Reception back in January. Girls will also join St Columba’s in Form 1 (Year 7) from September 2022. Headmaster David Buxton said: “This is a landmark day for St Columba's College as we open our co-educational Prep School and Sixth Form. We have welcomed more than 20 young women into the Lower Sixth for the next stage of their educational journey.”
Bishop John Sherrington, lead bishop for life issues for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, has written an open letter inviting Catholics to pray for the defeat of the Assisted Dying Bill to be debated in the House of Lords next month. It also encourages them to write to peers stating the reasons why they oppose this legislation and to put forward any relevant personal experience and stories. Bishop Sherrington said: “The term ‘assisted dying’ is euphemistic; the truth is that this bill seeks to introduce assisted suicide.” He highlighted that Catholic teaching opposes assisting suicide, and quoted the view of Pope Francis that, “physician-assisted suicide is part of a ‘throwaway culture’ that offers a ‘false compassion’ and treats a human person as a problem”.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has suggested that favouring wealthy pensioners over young people and the poor is not a “people-centred policy”. His comments came last week after Conservative MPs voted through a proposal to raise national insurance contributions by 1.25 percentage points through a new ring-fenced tax known as the “health and social care levy”. It could pose “a serious problem” for low-income workers, Archbishop Welby said. He urged the government to ensure that further spending decisions this autumn do not hurt the vulnerable and those least able to afford increasing costs. His views were endorsed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which tweeted on 7 September that “this extra cost adds insult to injury for families who are facing an historic £1,040 cut to their annual incomes when Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit are cut in less than a month.” Health Secretary Sajid Javid responded to critics saying that it was the fairest way to fund investment. But Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth called the proposals a "punishing unfair tax rise on working people”.
Bishop Michael Router of Armagh has appealed to the Irish government for urgent funding to prevent the closure of the Family Addiction Support Network (FASN) in Dundalk. The network was founded 20 years ago to support families traumatised by addiction. A lack of funding is threatening its continued existence. Speaking as patron of FASN, Bishop Router said he had seen at first hand the great work that the organisation undertakes. Last year FASN helped over 250 families in the area. However, he said he had also witnessed the negative impact that the lack of funding was having on the organisation’s dedicated personnel. “Without question, it will be devastating for such families if its service is forced to close,” he warned.
The auxiliary bishop of Armagh, who has parishes north and south of the border, appealed for government funding to help deliver FASN’s “vital services for the wellbeing of the community”. Last October FASN applied for funding to keep its level of service going but received just a fraction of what it needed to run projects across the North-East of the country.
The Church must “step out of the past, embrace the present and move to the future”, Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly said as he launched the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly’s new pastoral plan last weekend. Titled Seeds of Hope, the pastoral plan was developed after a four-year listening process and a consultation with 2,500 people. It foresees a Church of co-responsibility between laity and clergy in the future across its 35 parishes in Co Tipperary and 11 in Co Limerick. “The Church is changing now, and the priest-led Church of the past will need to embrace a partnership approach with people into the future,” Archbishop O’Reilly said on Sunday. The plan lists the inclusion of women in leadership roles as a priority and acknowledges that that minority groups - from divorced or separated people to LGBT+, migrants and the Travelling Community - should all have a place and feel they belong to the parish faith community. It encourages parishes to proactively welcome minority groups who feel less welcome or who do not feel they belong and plan events that convey hospitality and welcome. “The model whereby a public attends Mass once a week is not what the Church is about. It is and must be about the Church being out in the community rather than the community being in the Church,” Archbishop O’Reilly said.
Renate, Religious in Europe Networking Against Trafficking and Exploitation, held its Festival of Films on Human Trafficking last Sunday at the Royal Society of Arts and British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Winners of the Europe-wide RENATE short-film competition for young people included Elliott Engberg, who is Swedish but studying in Poland, for his film Traffic. Speaking from Poland by Zoom he said: “This is a topic I care about and I wanted to force the audience to view a the scene of a young woman being abducted and sold to the highest bidder.”Second place for Humans – Not for Sale went to Joel Black and Shadman Jabir, A-level students from London, who used a hand-held camera to film victims trying to escape. Third was Emily Downe, a young animator for Plain Sight, based on drawings she made while walking around Soho in Central London, suggesting that trafficking victims are trapped in oppressive situations all around the streets.
Trócaire has paid tribute to the generosity of the public in Northern Ireland whose donations secured the agency an additional £2 million in funding from the UK government. Earlier this year the government pledged to match public donations to Trócaire’s Lenten Appeal up to a maximum of £2 million. The appeal, which ran from February to May, highlighted the challenges faced by people in South Sudan who have had to flee their homes because of years of conflict.
The leader of the Irish Church has paid tribute to St Maximilian Kolbe’s “courage” and “priestly witness” in Auschwitz-Birkenau at an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Polish martyr’s death. Unveiling a memorial plaque to the “martyr of love” Archbishop Martin said, “In the midst of that camp of death, where ears were shut to the cries of the innocent, where eyes were blind to the dignity of humanity, where tongues failed to speak truth to power for the sake of those unjustly condemned, Fr Maximilian’s courage and serenity and unconditional service shone out. His was a triumphant testimony to the dignity of every human life, victory of love over hate, of faith and hope over despair, of life over death. His priestly witness continues to speak powerfully to the world and to us, gathered here eighty years later.” The plaque is located in the Garden of Mercy adjoining St Peter’s Church, Warrenpoint, Co Down. The event was organised by the Belfast-based Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, the Polish Honorary Consulate and Newry & Mourne Polish Community Group.
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