News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

Catholic politician and academic Baroness Shirley Williams (above) is to receive one of the highest accolades in the New Year Honours list.

Baroness Williams, 86, who was part of the Gang of Four rebel MPs who split from the Labour Party to found the SDP in 1981, retired as an active peer earlier this year after 50 years in politics. She has been recognised for her service to political and public life by being made a Companion of Honour.


The former Anglican Bishop for Liverpool, James Jones, was made a Knight Commander for services to the Hillsborough inquiry. Bishop Jones, now an assistant bishop in York, chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel. MBEs were awarded to Northern Irish sister Rose Devlin for work in community relations in schools and Gillian Walton, former deputy headteacher of St Martin’s Catholic Primary, Cheshire, for services to education.


RE move under fire
A proposal to remove RE as a core subject in the primary curriculum in Ireland has been sharply criticised by the head of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA). The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) is reviewing the primary syllabus and is due to advise the Education Minister on revised time allocations in a bid to address overcrowding of the primary school curriculum.

Currently three hours per week are allocated to Maths and English while two-and-a-half hours per week are devoted to RE. However, Seamus Mulconry, general secretary of the CPSMA, which provides advice to 2,800 Catholic schools, defended religion’s inclusion in the core primary curriculum. Stressing religion’s role in “transmitting a holistic world view with very sound values” in relation to issues such as homelessness, he urged those thinking of cutting it down to do some “serious thinking”.


Foreign priests are the “backbone” of the Catholic Church in north Wales, the Bishop of Wrexham has said. The diocese is increasingly dependent on priests from Africa and India, Bishop Peter Brignall told BBC Wales last week, as numbers of local priests had declined significantly. “If we are to continue anything like the present model of the Church in north Wales, then we are going to need men from overseas,” he explained. “I see them as being missionary priests – they are coming here because our own communities have not produced the vocations [and] are not fully taking their place within the Church,” he added. There are around 10 foreign priests serving parishes in north Wales.


The Bishop of Shrewsbury (above) has warned of the “terrible perversion of political correctness” that intimidates people from speaking about Christianity. In his homily for Midnight Mass, Bishop Mark Davies urged listeners to have courage, like the shepherds in the Christmas story, to speak out about their faith and the joy it brings. “May 2017 hear Christian voices being raised as clearly and brightly as the bells ringing out so happily each Christmas morning!” he said.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols opened his homily for Midnight Mass by acknowledging anxiety about the state of the world and quoting the poet W.B. Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …” We must look to Jesus, he said, who amid political and economic uncertainty, is the unshakeable and unchanging centre.

Abuse claims dismissed
A landmark abuse claim that could see the Diocese of Middlesbrough paying out millions of pounds in compensation has had three of its first test cases dismissed by a judge. More than 200 people allegedly suffered abuse while they were students at St William’s residential school in Market Weighton from 1970 to 1991. Last year the former principal and former chaplain of the De La Salle Brothers school were jailed for sex offences against children at the home, which educated boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Five former students  brought a civil case against the Church at Leeds High Court. In 2012 judges ruled that both the diocese and the religious order would be jointly liable for compensation claims.

On 21 December Judge Mark Gosnell awarded one of the claimants £14,000, but dismissed three of the four other claims. His ruling is expected on a further, fifth case this month. The De La Salle Brothers said it would be inappropriate for them to make a comment at this time as the case was an “ongoing matter before the High Court”.

Gang killings condemned
The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has condemned a recent rise in gangland killings in Ireland in his New Year message. At a Mass for the World Day of Peace, attended by President Michael D Higgins, the papal nuncio Charles Brown and members of the diplomatic corps, the archbishop warned of “a dangerous culture of violence in Ireland”, hitting out at drug barons and their “trade in death”. Some, he said, were even hiring killers from abroad to carry out their “evil work”.

In a joint message, leaders of Ireland’s four main Christian denominations prayed for political leaders in Belfast, Dublin and London ahead of Brexit negotiations “with implications for all Ireland”.  


The charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has praised the Prince of Wales’ Christmas message, in which he drew attention to the suffering of Christians in the Middle East. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Prince Charles (above) said that the suffering of those fleeing violent religious persecution in the Middle East and elsewhere echoed the suffering of the Holy Family. John Pontifex of ACN told The Tablet: “For the many thousands of people that ACN helps, many of whom have fled their homes like the Holy Family, this was … a sign that they are no longer suffering in silence but have been heard at the highest level.”


Catholic bioethicists have criticised the UK fertility regulator’s decision to approve the creation of so-called three-parent babies. The Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, which engages with ethical and biomedical issues, said the technique was tantamount to “genetic engineering” and “crosses the Rubicon into the genetic manipulation of future generations”. The advanced form of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) enables a woman at high risk of passing on genetic diseases to her children to use a donor egg, her own DNA and a partner’s sperm to eliminate inherited mitochondrial disease. The baby will have genes from three people. Clinics can apply to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a licence to conduct three-person IVF and NHS England has agreed to fund the first trial.