News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

The Abortion (Disability Equality) Act 2017, a private members bill brought by the Conservative peer Lord Shinkwin to “make provision for disability equality in respect of abortion” has passed the report stage in the House of Lords. The Act, if successful, would remove the section from the 1967 Abortion Act, which currently allows babies to be aborted up to the time of birth, on grounds of disability. Non-disabled babies, cannot be terminated after 24 weeks. Figures from disability campaigners show that 230 pregnancies were terminated after 24 weeks on the grounds of disability in 2015, a 271 per cent increase since 1995.


Former provincial superior of the sisters of the Congregation of Jesus and Director of St Bede’s Pastoral Centre in York, Sr Cecilia Goodman CJ, died suddenly last Sunday. Sister Cecilia (above) played a major role in offering ecumenical training for spiritual directors in the Ignatian tradition and was a national figure in the formation of novices during the 1980s and 90s. She was CJ novice director at the time of her death.

Wilshaw stresses leadership
Leadership matters more than anything else in schools, the former head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said at a reception for St Mary’s University in parliament last week. Sir Michael is taking up a new role as Professor of Education and Director of Multi-Academy Trusts at the London-based university, where one of his key concerns will be to challenge multi-academy trusts to deliver outstanding teaching and care. The former Chief Inspector of Schools in England will focus initially on working with around 200 schools in the Diocese of Westminster.


Fatima Salaria has been appointed as the new BBC Commissioning Editor, Religion and Ethics. It is the second time that a Muslim has held a senior position in religious programming: Aaqil Ahmed was Head of Religion and Ethics until the role was axed. Mrs Salaria will work alongside former Labour Minister James Purnell, who is the BBC’s head of radio, education and religious affairs programming.


Senior clergy in the Church of England have stepped forward to defend the prospective Bishop of Sheffield, Philip North, amid concerns over his opposition to the ordination of women. Responding to reports that Dr Martyn Percy, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, objected to the appointment of the Anglo-Catholic, Archbishop of York John Sentamu said: “those who dissent as well as those who assent to particular propositions are both treated as loyal members of the Church.”

Writing in the Yorkshire Post Archbishop Sentamu said that he looked forward to Bishop-designate North’s nomination.
“Bishop Philip has assured women clergy in the diocese that he is in favour of women’s leadership and would actively promote it. I know he will.”


Cardinal Vincent Nichols has urged Catholics not just to hand the sick over to professional care, but to offer them pastoral and spiritual care in their communities, in a pastoral letter read out in Westminster parishes on 26 February, just ahead of Lent and as a continuation of the Year of Mercy. In his reflection on the diocesan season of prayer, entitled Called to Serve the Sick, he also counselled against forgetting those with complex needs or long term conditions. “God wants us to say to those for whom we care: I, too, in God’s name will never forget you,” he said.

To this end, the day before, Cardinal Nichols blessed an additional “Jumbulance” (see photo) to allow more pilgrims with special care needs to travel to Lourdes this summer, after a Mass at Westminster Cathedral. The Jumbulance is a coach-sized ambulance for those unable to fly because they need constant medical care. The season of prayer will continue until the diocesan Lourdes pilgrimage in July.

Girls’ school may admit boys
A leading Catholic school in Glasgow, which for more than a century has only admitted girls, may become co-educational if a campaign by local parents is successful. Notre Dame High is Scotland’s only single-sex state secondary school. Families have expressed concern that male siblings may not attend the same senior school as their sisters. Opponents of the initiative point out that only local parents have been canvassed, ignoring a large number of families outside the catchment area. There is also concern that a relatively high proportion of Muslim girls, sent to the school precisely because their families like its strong ethos and single-sex status, would be put off by a co-ed arrangement.


A second Benedictine monk from Ampleforth Abbey in York has died in as many weeks. Fr Bonaventure Knollys OSB  died peacefully in the monastery infirmary on 23 February aged 81. Educated at Ampleforth, he joined the monastic community in 1953 and taught French at the school before a diverse career which included retreat work in Africa and working for parishes across the UK, before in 2002 he returned to Ampleforth as novice master. Fr Augustine Measures OSB of Ampleforth died recently, aged 89.


Priory’s historic opening
Last weekend Silverstream Priory became the first new monastery established in the Diocese of Meath since the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536.

Bishop Michael Smith of Meath presided at the ceremony which formally recognised the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar as a monastic institute of consecrated life in the Diocese of Meath.

The community of eight male religious, who follow the Rule of St Benedict, was founded from a parent community in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Silverstream Priory was built around 1845 near Stamullen in County Meath.

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, Prior of Silverstream (above, second from left), explained that the monks intend to offer retreats to priests and religious and self-fund its operations, but it couldn’t do that until the renovation works were paid for.


The Victorian Society is urging the public to sign a petition to stop Grade-I listed Bath Abbey removing its Victorian pews as part of a renovation plan. The nave pews have “great historical and aesthetic importance” with “each one modelled on other sixteenth-century Somerset churches” said Victorian Society director Christopher Costelloe. Plans to spend the £12.1m funding on a more flexible style of worship that better accommodates the disabled could be achieved less destructively, the Society said.