News Briefing: from Britain and Ireland

A leading Scottish politician has revealed plans to “chip away” at Catholic education. Tommy Sheppard (above), SNP MP for Edinburgh East, was recorded at a Humanist Society Scotland (HSS) fringe event at the 2016 SNP Conference saying that he wanted to end mandatory representation by faith groups on local authority education committees and that he wanted to help achieve a completely secular school system in Scotland. A church spokesman described the MP’s comments, made in support of HSS’s “Enlighten Up” campaign, as “chillingly intolerant”.

Mr Sheppard advocated an accumulation of “little victories”, and a move next to a situation where humanists would advocate against religion defining “the value system in the school”. He told the Sunday Herald that his comments had been taken out of context and that at no stage did he criticise Catholic schools. The SNP spokesperson said that the views expressed at the fringe meeting were personal to Mr Sheppard and did not represent the position of the party or the Scottish Government.

The BBC’s Songs of Praise will be produced by two external independent production companies, after the new charter agreement led the network to outsource more of its output to competitive tender. Avanti Media and Nine Lives Media will produce the programme for three years. Fatima Salaria, the BBC’s commissioning editor, religion and ethics, said Songs of Praise remained the BBC’s flagship religious programme. The Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, told the Daily Mail that he feared the decision would be “another nail in the coffin of our religious literacy as a nation”.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols has said that Pope Francis is correct in not responding to four cardinals who submitted a dubia or request, calling for clarification on Amoris Laetitia.

In an interview with America magazine, he said such a response would amount to applying a law, which he believes the Pope is trying to avoid, rather than responding to people to help them in their journey to God. The cardinal said his archdiocese is still considering how to implement Amoris Laetitia, which appears to open the way for Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

Praising Malta’s bishops’ guidelines, which move in that direction, Cardinal Nichols said there should be a willingness from ministers to journey with a divorced and remarried Catholic seeking Communion and a willingness on the believer’s part to acknowledge that he or she is not living in accordance with church teaching. Calling Pope Francis “one of the toughest people I’ve ever met”, the cardinal said that although the Pope was being met with resistance to his efforts to reform church bureaucracy he would not be diverted. “By ‘tough’, I mean his work regime is astonishing. If he’s got something in his mind and he thinks it’s right, he’s not going to waiver this way and that. He’s immensely patient but clear. He’s clear. When he decides, he decides,” he said.

Around 10,000 young people and their youth leaders, along with several diocesan bishops, packed the Wembley SSE Arena in London last Saturday for the Flame 2017 gathering, organised by the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols delivered a message from Pope Francis, who said that he hoped that “Flame 2017 may foster a greater zeal within all of you to be witnesses to Christ’s love in the community”. Cardinal Charles Bo from Myanmar was warmly received when he urged the young people to “carry the flame of hope” in today’s world, countering hate and violence. Flame participants were told that “anyone helping refugees is doing God’s work”.

Abuse inquiry setback
Scotland’s child abuse inquiry has undergone a further setback after a leaked email revealed that the Scottish Government was at “serious risk” of missing a crucial deadline. In an internal email a senior civil servant warned that if no staff could be found to service the Scottish Government’s part of the inquiry, the deadline would be missed, “with consequential reputational loss for ministers, and a potential loss of credibility with key stakeholders in the inquiry itself”. The inquiry, which is due to report in 2019, is investigating historical allegations of child abuse at more than 60 large institutions in Scotland including a number run by the Catholic Church, as well as some top private schools.

The three-day Spring General Meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare, covered issues including the Citizens’ Assembly on abortion, the World Meeting of Families 2018, justice and peace in Northern Ireland, the 2017 Trócaire Lenten campaign and famine and conflicts across central Africa and the Yemen, as well as mother and baby homes.

Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North Diana Johnson has won the right to introduce a bill to parliament which would decriminalise abortion by repealing a law that dates back to Victorian times. The 10-minute rule bill, which was tabled this week, succeeded by 172 votes for and 142 against. If passed, the Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill will, according to its critics, deregulate abortion and make it easier to have abortions after the current 24-week limit, whatever the reason. Ms Johnson said that the bill would protect women currently threatened with criminal punishment for having abortions illegally, that is without the consent of two doctors. Pro-life charity Life’s education director Anne Scanlan urged MPs to act now to stop the bill. “One can only imagine the operational and procedural free-for-all, placing the health and safety of women at risk, if legal restrictions are totally removed,” she said.

Seven nuns from the Carmelite Monastery in Ware, Hertfordshire, became unlikely celebrities last weekend when a photograph of them standing next to the station sign at London’s Seven Sisters station went viral. The nuns, four of whom can be seen above, were returning from a meeting with Cardinal Vincent Nichols.

Kuby to give talks
The Diocese of Shrewsbury is holding three separate talks by German writer and sociologist Gabriele Kuby on the “Ideology of Gender”. Ms Kuby is author of the international best-seller The Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom. The conference for the laity, entitled “Man or Woman – A Matter of Choice” will take place at St Christopher’s Church Hall in Romiley, Cheshire on 21 March. The diocese’s clergy and educationalists will be invited to separate meetings on “The Gift of Human Sexuality”.