The former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Martin of Springburn (pictured), has died aged 72 after a short illness. The first Catholic Speaker since the Reformation, Michael Martin was Speaker for nine years to 2009. He resigned in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal. A Glaswegian former sheet metal worker, he served as a Labour MP for three decades. Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Lord Martin would be “sorely missed”.
Campaigners have called on the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to allow women to take a medical abortion pill at home, instead of at a clinic, which would bring England into line with Scotland and Wales. In a letter to The Times, representatives from 20 groups, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, argued that the “simple measure” would “improve the wellbeing of women”. Two separate pills are taken for a medical abortion. Opponents of the current arrangements complain that women risk suffering pain in public on their way home after the second dosage.
SPUC Scotland, which is challenging the Scottish government’s decision on the issue, has said it is an “alarming development”, which has potentially “horrific” health risks for mothers and their babies.
Separately, legislation to allow the introduction of abortion on the Isle of Man was receiving its third reading this week, after the biggest ever response to a public consultation.
A doctor campaigning for the change, Alex Allinson, said the aim was to take abortion “out of the realm of the criminal justice system”. Abortion is only currently legal on the Isle of Man in very limited circumstances; the Abortion Reform Bill would allow terminations up to 14 weeks on request, up to 24 weeks in cases of fetal anomaly or “serious social grounds” and after 24 weeks where the life of the mother or baby is at risk.
A working party set up to study and define sectarianism in Scotland has come under attack for having no representatives from either the Catholic Church or the country’s Irish Catholic community. Some MSPs have also expressed concern that one of the seven-member group is Andrew Tickell, a law lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University who is on record as saying that the expression of anti-Catholic sentiments on social media is an exercise of free speech. In a 2016 Times article, Mr Tickell claimed that most Scots saw the clergy as “second-rate ham actors in fancy dress”.
Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, has questioned Mr Tickell’s suitability and has called for him to be replaced by a representative of the Catholic Church. A church spokesman said that “the Scottish government could probably save a great deal of time and money in its search for a definition of the word ‘sectarian’ by simply buying a dictionary. The decision instead, to set up a working group on the subject, seems like a calculated attempt to ignore the reality that over half of all religious hate crime in Scotland targets Catholics or Catholicism.”
Fundraisers fight to save church
Parishioners in Wales battling a church closure have launched a fundraising campaign to take their appeal to the Vatican, with the help of a canon lawyer. They are holding a concert this weekend in an Anglican church in Conwy after the Bishop of Wrexham, Peter Brignall, rejected their appeal against the closure of St Michael’s in Conwy. Parishioner John Lewis said the closure would end an 800-year Catholic presence in the town.
Singing priest’s sabbatical plan
Irish singing priest Fr Ray Kelly, who wowed judges on the Britain’s Got Talent television show with a rendition of the REM classic “Everybody Hurts”, says he is considering taking a year’s sabbatical from parish duties to pursue a singing career. The Diocese of Meath priest, who wore his clerical collar for his performance on the ITV talent show, received generous praise from the judges.
The organisers of last Sunday’s Rosary on the Coast prayer initiative say tens of thousands of people took part in 400 locations, from the islands of Scotland down to Jersey and Guernsey. The Walsingham gathering at Wells-next-the-Sea was live-streamed by EWTN and received 23,000 viewers.
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