The Bishops of England Wales have published a prayer and resources to mark Marriage Week (February 7 – 14). “Marriage… one flesh, given and received” is the theme this year.
“Marriage is worth investing in because all the research shows that happy families make for a stable society,” say the bishops in a statement. “It is really important to keep working on a marriage. Couples who do so are more likely to stay together.”
New research from Marriage Foundation shows that 71 per cent of parents of newborns from high-earning households are married compared to only 34 per cent of parents of newborns in low-income households.
Controversial charges against a pro-life protestor described as “thought crime” by her supporters have been dropped by the courts in advance of new laws outlawing protest near abortion clinics passing through parliament.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the UK director of pro-life campaign group March for Life, was arrested near an abortion clinic in Birmingham late last year after she told police officers she “might be” praying in her head.
The police understood this to indicate Vaughan-Spruce had breached the conditions of a new “buffer zone” banning all forms of protest around the clinic.
The dropping of the charges, which Vaughan-Spruce’s lawyers say leaves her in “significant legal uncertainty”, comes as amendments to the government’s Public Order Bill introducing such buffer zones across England passed both Houses of Parliament.
Pact, the Catholic prison charity, says the mental and physical health of prisoners has reached a new low following Covid.
Half of all prisoners and now suffer mental health problems according to Pact’s new report Nobody’s Listening. One in every three prisoners is struggling with serious drug addiction.
Bishop Richard Moth welcomed the report’s emphasis on the key role families could play in improving prisoner health care. He said: “Involving family members in prison healthcare reduces deaths in custody and makes our communities safer, yet much more needs to be done to ensure more proactive and positive family engagement.”
Church Action on Poverty Sunday will take place on 19 February. Resources including prayers, blessings, poems, hymns and video clips and Powerpoint presentations are available here.
This year, the Christian social justice charity is sharing resources from the Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum (CIP).
A spokesperson said: “When people come together to reclaim their dignity, agency and power, we can make huge changes. The cost of living crisis threatens to sweep millions into poverty, threatening their dignity and agency. No one should have to face the choice between heating and eating.”
A concert to raise funds for Christians in the Holy Land will be held in Westminster Cathedral on 16 February.
The Priests, a trio of singing clergy from the Northern Irish Diocese of Down and Connor, comprising Fr Eugene and Fr Martin O’Hagan (who are brothers) and Fr David Delargy, will are to sing at the event.
The London Welsh Male Voice Choir will also perform at the Friends of the Holy Land Concert. Ticket prices start at £20 and may be booked via Eventbrite or by telephoning: 01926 512980. The concert begins at 7.30pm.
Church support for refugees and asylum seekers continues to mount amidst the hostile approach of the UK government.
The next Monthly Prayer Vigil will take place outside the Home Office on 20 February with Westminster Justice and Peace and the London Catholic Worker in attendance.
Three days earlier a major online conference, “Faith and Frontiers: Christian Responses to the Migration Crisis”, has been organised by Project Bonhoeffer. It will draw on insights from the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church has issued a new downloadable asylum and refugee briefing, focusing on refugees, not as a problem, but as people on the move, exploring a Christian response.
The Disasters Emergency Committee has announced that £400 million has been raised by British charities to support victims of the conflict in Ukraine.
The 15 members charities include Cafod, Christian Aid and Tearfund. They've worked alongside international partners and the Ukrainian authorities to support basic needs projects and provide medical equipment and supplies for hospitals and restore water supplies.
DEC charities have been supporting some of the 13 million people displaced by the conflict. Cafod works with Depaul Ukraine’s team of volunteers to deliver aid to where it’s needed most.
Bishop Michael Router has said the Church must stand against a culture which allows euthanasia and assisted suicide to be presented as acceptable.
In his message for World Day of the Sick, Armagh’s auxiliary bishop hit out at today’s “pervasive culture of efficiency” which leaves no room for frailty and seeks to marginalise the vulnerable. Referring to Pope Francis’ message for the sick, he said that for some, illness can bring an experience of isolation and abandonment, which the Pope calls inhumane.
“The mission of the Church is manifested in acts of care and through such outreach she becomes a true ‘field hospital’ where no one is forgotten or disposable.”
This year’s theme of World Day of the Sick is, “Take care of him: compassion is a synodal exercise of healing” and is inspired by the parable of the good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke.
Separately, as Ireland celebrated its first bank holiday in honour of St Brigid, Bishop Router said, “Today we suffer from a lack of energy and vitality that comes from letting the Church in this country grow tired and uninspiring.”
Speaking at Mass in St Brigid’s Oratory Shrine in Faughart, Co Louth, he said: “In Brigid we have an example of a woman who can inspire the young and indeed all of us to be reinvigorated by the good news of the Gospel which never grows old.”
Archbishop Michael Neary led tributes to priest, sociologist, writer and activist Fr Micheál Mac Gréil who died in Westport, Co Mayo after a short illness at the age of 91.
In his homily at Fr Mac Gréil’s funeral, Archbishop Neary recalled the Jesuit’s campaigning in areas such as prison reform and for the Irish language.
He told mourners, “There was always a ruthless honesty about Micheál. When Pope Francis was elected Pope, Micheál acknowledged that Pope Francis had studied in Milltown Park while Micheál was there but he said that he couldn’t remember him. It has been established since however that the Pope remembers Micheál!”
President Michael D Higgins said Fr Mac Gréil constantly challenged social prejudice.
“This was reflected in the broad range of causes he supported, such as fighting for the rights of Travellers, for the Irish language, for prison reform, for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and in support of the Irish language and the development of the western region,” President Higgins said.
“There is a crisis in priestly vocations, and this crisis is linked to the deeper crises of faith,” Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan of Waterford and Lismore has said.
Speaking as he announced a special conference on Evangelisation and Vocation, the Chair of the Bishops’ Council for Vocations commented: “It is our desire to assemble from around the country all of those who are passionate about diocesan priesthood for a one-day conference on Evangelisation and Vocation. In the conference we are positioning the issue of vocation within the wider context of Evangelisation.”
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelisation, has been announced as the keynote speaker at the conference in April at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
Separately, Vocations Ireland hosted their spring conference on the Feast of St Brigid. The keynote speaker was Sr Lynn Levo CSJ, who spoke via Zoom on being pioneers of unseen futures.
“The future is in our hands,” she told representatives of religious and missionary orders.
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