News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

Social action by the Catholic Church has been recognised as part of a “rich tradition of religion as a force for good in this country”, in a government review into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities published on 5 December. Caritas Social Action Network is recognised in a section of the report by Dame Louise Casey, along with two others, as examples of faith-based organisations that “undertake social action and help make local communities in Britain a better place to live”.
“For all those involved, faith is not something incidental to their actions. To them, their faith is realised in action: in commitment to others; in caring; in compassion; in an all-embracing feeling of solidarity,” wrote Dame Louise (pictured after receiving her honour last month). The report, published by the Department for Communities and Local Government, described segregation and social exclusion as being at “worrying levels” and fuelling inequality in some areas of Britain. In a statement in response the Bishops’ Conference said that the Church was, through its parishes, social agencies and schools, an instrument of integration.

Academy drive
Westminster Diocese has outlined a new strategy to help schools to convert to academies, including setting up a project board to help schools transition in the coming months and years. J.P. Morrison, the director of the Education Service, said that schools would be grouped in Academy Trusts, family clusters in their deaneries and local areas, where proximity “will allow for better collaboration, and opportunities to develop more tangible, durable and sustainable partnerships among the schools and with the local parishes”. But he stressed that there would be no “forced academisation”. Catholic schools resisted the Government’s drive to convert prior to the Government’s decision to lift a 50 per cent cap on faith-based admissions.

Baroness (Helen) Liddell, former Labour Secretary of State for Scotland, has been appointed first chair of the Independent Review Group, which will review safeguarding standards in the Church in Scotland and conduct audits.
She has been appointed in line with the McLellan Commission’s recommendation that an independent group should be set up, functioning separately from the Church, to oversee safeguarding protocols and practice.

£2.9m for abbey
Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire has been awarded £2.9 million of lottery money to help preserve its buildings. The Heritage Lottery Fund grant will go towards repairing the Grade II listed Monk’s Bridge, which was built in 1854 to enable the Benedictine monks to maintain their private enclosure when walking to their nearby cemetery, and urgent repairs at Ampleforth’s Grade I listed Abbey Church, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Marriage Care celebrated its 70th anniversary on 28 November with a reception in the House of Lords, co-hosted by Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green MP, as well as representatives from the charity’s 700 volunteers, attended. Marriage Care is the largest faith-based provider of marriage and relationship support services in England and Wales. Last year, the charity supported over 9,000 people across 100 locations. It now has over 50 centres across England, Wales and Gibraltar.

Scotland’s first Caritas
The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh has launched the first Scottish domestic branch of the aid organisation Caritas. Caritas St Andrews and Edinburgh was launched on St Andrew’s Day at a soup kitchen run by the Edinburgh convent of the Missionaries of Charity, whose mother superior, Sr Caritas MC, is pictured above. It will promote social action in the archdiocese’s 113 parishes and work with organisations such as St Vincent de Paul.

Christians and other believers should have their faith protected by law so that they can opt out of certain tasks, says a new report from think tank ResPublica. It has urged the Government to draw up a new bill of rights which would make it a duty for employers and businesses to make “reasonable accommodation” for people’s beliefs. It also recommends a religious policy review council and a religious freedom index.  

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, has defended Christians’ right to talk about their faith at work. At Prime Minister’s Questions last week Mrs May, who is a member of the Church of England, welcomed a report by the Evangelical Alliance and the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship that said that employees should look for respectful opportunities to spread the Gospel. “I’m sure that we would all want to ensure that people at work do feel able to speak about their faith, and also able to speak quite freely about Christmas,” the Prime Minister said. She also anticipated attending Midnight Mass, something she said had been a tradition in her childhood.

The Scottish Catholic Parliamentary Office is to relocate from Glasgow to Edinburgh to be closer to the Scottish Parliament. Parliamentary officer Anthony Horan said that it was critical that he be “accessible to our elected representatives and their teams, and that they are accessible to me”.

Catholic schools have excelled in this year’s education listings. New Hall School in Chelmsford, Essex, was voted Independent School of the Year 2016 in the TES (formerly the Times Educational Supplement) School Awards, and St Dominic’s, in Harrow on the Hill, was voted Sunday Times Sixth Form College of the Year. “Teamwork and commitment to a vision of education that remains true to our Catholic values have been the key to our success,” said Katherine Jeffrey, headteacher of New Hall.

Early monks
Skeletons excavated at a site in Somerset are the oldest remains of monks to be found in the UK, carbon dating has revealed. The skeletons, unearthed at the Medieval Beckery Chapel near Glastonbury, indicate a monastic cemetery dating back to the fifth or sixth centuries. Monasticism began in France just before AD400, and gradually spread all around the Irish Sea in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and western England, Dr Richard Brunning of the South West Heritage Trust dig told The Guardian. “But this is our earliest archaeological evidence for it in the UK.”