Assisted dying would create new dilemmas at the end of life. Doctors would be concerned about the certainty of the diagnosis. For example, I recall an elderly man who was confidently diagnosed by a specialist team as having inoperable pancreatic cancer and given weeks to live. He would have met the Assisted Dying Bill criteria, but years later he is still playing golf; the diagnosis was wrong. Doctors would be concerned about assessing people’s mental capacity to take such an irrevocable decision. The standard tests assess a person’s ability to take a decision, not whether the decision itself is reasonable or based on realistic assumptions. Doctors would be concerned that a person might be pressurised in subtle or concealed ways.

In the Netherlands the law requires that the doctor believes that the person faces unbearable and hopeless suffering and that there are no reasonable alternatives. There is no such requirement in the Assisted Dying Bill. A doctor might be asked to end the life of a person who, although believed to be terminally ill, was not suffering and where palliative care would be expected to alleviate future suffering. Even doctors who find assisted suicide morally acceptable would find ending the life of such a person difficult.

The Bill would legalise physician-assisted suicide but not euthanasia. The deliberate killing of a person with the intention of avoiding suffering would remain illegal. A health professional could assist someone to self-administer the medicine but the final act must be taken by the person herself. Consider the position of a nurse attending a home to carry out an assisted suicide. The patient cannot swallow the medication so she sets up a syringe driver. The patient is too weak to press the button and requests that the nurse does it. But if the nurse presses the syringe driver button, that would be euthanasia, therefore illegal, and would expose her to the risk of an accusation of murder. The line between assisted suicide and euthanasia can be a fine one.

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In the year that the U.S. economy was supposed to take off, an odd thing has happened: Americans are finding new jobs, but they aren’t finding employers willing to dole out meaningful pay increases.

It’s the tension at the center of an economy that is only growing more perplexing as it enters a perilous autumn.

Fresh data released Friday ”” showing unemployment at a seven-year low and a cooling pace of jobs growth ”” provided conflicting signals about the nation’s economic momentum as the Federal Reserve considers raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. The U.S. added 173,000 jobs, slightly below expectations, while the unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent. Never before has the nation’s unemployment rate plunged so low ”” a point when companies should be competing aggressively for workers ”” while wages have stayed so flat.

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While New York City’s principals, assistant principals and district supervisors rinse off the sand and sunblock to get their schools student-ready this week, the head of their union, Ernest A. Logan, is on call. A former Brooklyn principal, Mr. Logan, 64, has led the 6,500-member Council of School Supervisors and Administrators for the past 10 years. He lives in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights North Historic District with his wife, Beatrice Logan, 68, a retired guidance counselor. For them, Sunday is all about church, a daylong event filled with prayer, song and service. “I encounter a lot of crazy stuff on this job,” Mr. Logan said. “I have to stop and pause.”

Predawn Prayer–I’m up almost every morning at 5:30, even on Sunday. I basically have time to pray before I start the day. I do this every day. I grew up on public assistance, one of 13 kids. I was the first one in my family to complete college, so I know the struggle my mother had raising us. The first time my mother went to the principal’s office, I was the principal. We understood that we’d succeed if we prayed and followed the rules. That’s why every day is centered on prayer.

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Twitter is something of a success story for our clergy. They are among the medium’s most popular characters, with hoards of followers, many of whom never interact with their ilk IRL.

But their presence has not come without a backlash. Accusations of narcissism and time-wasting have been levelled at the men and women who, some would argue, should be too busy visiting the poor and ministering to the sick, to be crafting 140-character epigrams.

“Why are they wasting their time on social media?” was the first question posed to three prominent clergy tweeters at Greenbelt on Saturday.

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It appears, then, that it is a question of when, not if, there will be a change in the law. And yet we must heed John Stuart Mill’s call to be wary about the tyranny of the majority. For, as the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argues in today’s Observer, such a change would mark the crossing of a legal and ethical Rubicon. “We are asked to sanction doctors participating in individuals taking steps to end their lives,” Welby writes. “This is a change of monumental proportions both in the law and in the role of doctors.”

Welby observes that any “change in the law would place very many thousands of vulnerable people at risk”. Fearing that they were a burden, some would choose to end their lives, he says. The risk, ultimately, he warns is that we end up in a society “where each life is no longer seen as worth protecting, worth honouring, worth fighting for”. For Welby, “the current law is not ”˜broken’. There is no need to fix it.”

Society seems to disagree, as does one of his predecessors, Lord Carey. So, too, do the majority of Christians, according to at least one poll. But this is not to say that polls should determine policy nor that the church’s entrenched opposition to reform be ignored.

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Britain will cross a “legal and ethical Rubicon” if parliament votes to permit terminally ill patients to end their lives, said the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as leaders of all the UK’s major faith groups call on MPs to reject plans to allow assisted suicide.

In an extraordinary show of unity on Sunday, the heads of Britain’s Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities wrote a joint letter to every MP ”“ published in the Observer ”“ urging them to throw out the assisted dying bill, which will be debated in the Commons on Friday.

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My third concern is that we need to reflect on what sort of society we might become if we were to permit assisted suicide. At present, we can show love, care and compassion to those who at all ages and stages of life are contemplating suicide. We can try to intervene, to support them to embrace life once more. We can do all in our power to surround those who are terminally ill with the best possible palliative care, including physical, emotional and spiritual support. We can redouble our efforts to alleviate suffering. We can show that we love even when people have given up on caring for themselves. We can support our doctors and nurses as they act consistently in the best interests of their patients, affirming life and caring for the vulnerable.

We risk all this for what? Becoming a society where each life is no longer seen as worth protecting, worth honouring, worth fighting for? The current law and the guidelines for practice work; compassion is shown, the vulnerable are protected. In spite of individual celebrity opinions and the “findings” of snap opinion polls (that cannot hope to do justice to the intricacies of the issue) the current law is not “broken”. There is no need to fix it.

Read it all from the Observer.

Most Holy Spirit,
the Paraclete, Father of the poor,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Light of hearts, Sanctifier of souls;
behold me prostrate in Thy presence.

I adore Thee with profoundest homage:
I bless Thee a thousand times
and with the Seraphim who stand before Thy throne,
I also say: “Holy, holy, holy.”

I firmly believe that Thou art eternal,
consubstantial with the Father and the Divine Son.

I hope in Thy goodness
that Thou wilt deign to save and sanctify my soul.

–Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787)

Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night; for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy.

–Psalm 63:3-7

[Middle Eastern Christians]… are the most vulnerable and repeatedly targeted victims of this conflict. Indeed, a hundred years after the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, in which over a million Christians are estimated to have been killed by Ottoman Muslims, the same is happening today in the form of an ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region. Christians have been crucified, beheaded, raped, and subjected to forced conversion. The so-called Islamic State and other radical groups are openly glorifying the slaughter of Christians.

Britain should make Syrian Christians a priority because they are a particularly vulnerable group. Furthermore, we are a Christian nation with an established Church so Syrian Christians will find no challenge to integration. The churches are already well-prepared and eager to offer support and accommodation to those escaping the conflict.

Some will not like me saying this, but in recent years, there has been too much Muslim mass immigration to Europe. This has resulted in ghettos of Muslim communities living parallel lives to mainstream society, following their own customs and even their own laws. Isn’t it high-time instead for the oil-rich Gulf States to open their doors to the many Muslims who are fleeing conflict? Surely if they are concerned for fellow Muslims who prefer to live in Muslim-majority countries, then they have a moral responsibility to intervene.

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Britain should “crush” Isil by taking part in military action in Syria, a former Archbishop of Canterbury suggests today amid mounting calls for further air strikes.

In an article for The Telegraph, Lord Carey says that it is “not enough” to send aid to Syria and admit thousands of refugees to this country.

He argues that Isil needs to be dealt with “for once and for all” and that “air strikes and other British military assistance” may be needed in Syria.

He also says Britain should be prioritising Christian refugees who are victims of “ethnic cleansing” and have been crucified, beheaded, raped, and subjected to forced conversion by Isil.

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The heartbreaking picture of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach has unleashed an outpouring of grief and anger, perhaps marking a tipping point in the refugee crisis that has been unfolding in Syria for five years. Calls that Western governments do something have become deafening and can no longer be ignored.

But it has also allowed emotion to overcome reason, and for assumptions to trump facts. Canada and its government are not responsible for this little boy’s death, even his mourning aunt absolved Canada of blame. Misinformation spread by social media unfairly vilified Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. Neither has anything to apologize for.

However, Canada’s immigration system, designed to ensure those coming to settle have the qualifications to succeed, is not well suited to act quickly in a crisis. There is too much red tape and too many bottlenecks, some of which are the fault of transit countries and the United Nations.

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In late August, Shannon Neuman and her husband Chris went to the municipal court in Calgary, Alberta, to get a divorce. They had already filled out the forms and taken the requisite seminars. They navigated the 24-story Courts Centre and dropped their papers off.

Then, on their way out, Chris and Shannon ”” no longer the Neumans ”” paused in front of a courthouse sign. They snapped a selfie, both smiling.

“Here’s Chris Neuman and I yesterday after filing for divorce!” Shannon wrote in a Facebook post that was shared 11,000 times within its first hours online. (Wrote Chris, in the comments: “I couldn’t have hand-picked a better ex-wife if I tried.”)

Er ”¦ what is going on here?

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Wellness is prized these days. We want to balance our work and life, ensuring a healthy lifestyle. We try to carve out time for exercise, avoid fatty foods, and shun smoking (and smokers). Positivity is considered a virtue.

But Stockholm Business School professor Carl Cederstrom believes we have gone overboard with our walking meetings, treadmill desks, and meditation classes. “Wellness has become an ideology,” he says in an interview ”“ a dangerous ideology because not all of us can live up to the wellness creed and there can be an intolerance towards smokers and people with weight issues, for example. But it’s also dangerous because it obscures the fact economic and social factors ”“ and political decisions ”“ can have a much greater determinant on overall health than the individual actions of the higher-income folk who have bought into what he and fellow critic André Spicer, a professor at London’s City University, call in their new book The Wellness Syndrome.

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