The General Synod has committed itself to “taking the necessary steps to raise up and support a new generation of lay and ordained leaders from estates and working-class backgrounds”…. But it will fail in this task if it continues to give the impression that it prefers candidates for ordination who are university-educated and middle-class.

As the Principal of Emmanuel Theological College, the Revd Dr Michael Leyden, said this month: “Without greater diversity within the formational pathways we have, we will continue to give the impression that the Church of England prefers middle-class clergy — but that does and will continue to hinder our engagement with the communities we’re called to serve in Christ’s name”….

His remarks resonated with me. I have a practical-theology degree now, and am a priest; but I started out as a habitual truant who left school at the age 15 with not a single qualification. I went on to be a van assistant for Curry’s Electrical; a failed stand-up comedian; a successful store manager for Argos; and ended up, eventually, as an Anglican priest in Burnley and a bestselling author who was diagnosed with dyslexia in his late forties.

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"I implore the wider Church to go mining for these individual human beings of raw material that, once excavated, reveal an abundance of 24-carat potential — 24-carat potential that can change the direction of travel for the Church."https://t.co/gr22g79710

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) April 29, 2024

In the context of our responsibilities as a wider society, we are grateful to the medical, nursing and care staff who support our loved ones in their last weeks, days and hours. Sadly, however, palliative care is underfunded and limited in Scotland, and our Parliament should focus its energies on improving palliative care rather than on contemplating assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The private member’s bill to introduce assisted suicide for those aged sixteen and over, recently published in the Scottish Parliament, amounts to a rejection of the common responsibility we owe to each other and to those who are ill and dying.

Campaigners call it ‘assisted dying’ when what is really meant is assisted suicide. Palliative care and the process by which families and communities accompany and support those in the final moments of their lives is what we all usually mean by assisted dying. What is now being proposed is that doctors hand a lethal concoction of drugs to a patient to kill themselves. It is a direct, intentional action to end the patient’s life and truly crosses a Rubicon in Scotland.

Read it carefully and read it all.

We heard the Scottish Catholic bishops letter against the assisted suicide bill in Scotland read out at Mass at Castlebay, Barra this morning. A very well-argued document which deserves wide dissemination.

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) April 28, 2024

Terrorism is a grisly theatre of violence, for which mega events offer a tempting stage. Black September, a Palestinian group, gripped the world’s attention when it took nine Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics in 1972. is likes to strike at big, crowded venues: the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, the Manchester arena in 2017 and now Crocus City Hall.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups. But extremists are on the march again. They have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving in cyberspace. Furthermore, Israel’s war in Gaza is all but certain to radicalise a new generation.

The history of global jihadism is one of reinvention under pressure from the West. After September 11th 2001, America and its allies overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and evicted al-Qaeda. American forces killed its leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan in 2011. Then his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was eliminated by a drone strike in Kabul in 2022. Al-Qaeda has yet to name a new leader. Meanwhile is, al-Qaeda’s even more wanton progeny, caused a sensation by carving out a “caliphate” across large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, drawing volunteers from Europe and elsewhere. Its last stronghold was destroyed in 2019 and is has lost four leaders since that year began.

Even so, jihadists fight on.

Read it all.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups.

But extremists have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving online https://t.co/hUdgKYtJAQ 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 30, 2024

Unschooled, Catherine spontaneously learned to read while in her anchorite cell, but she could not write for most of her life. Undeterred, Gardner tell us, she would dictate multiple letters to different scribes, simultaneously:

We see her dictating simultaneously to these three young men three letters: one to Pope Gregory, another to Bernabo Visconti, and a third to a certain nobleman. … She dictates first to one, then to another. At times, her face is covered by her hands of veil, as though she is absorbed in thought. … Then suddenly, all three of the scribes stop writing, look puzzled, and appeal to Catherine for help. They have all taken down the same sentence, not knowing for whom it was intended. Catherine reassures them saying, “Dear sons, don’t trouble over this, for you have done it all by the work of the Holy Spirit. When the letters are finished, we will see how the words fit in with our intentions, and then we’ll arrange what had best be done!”

By this same method was her book, The Dialogue of Divine Providence, dictated, and Catherine, in typical detachment, would refer to that masterpiece as “the book in which I found some recreation.”

Detachment was the key for Catherine; a virtue she cultivated from early childhood when she was forced to labor for her family as punishment for refusing marriage. It was a startling contrast to the society around her which, still dazed by the cruel efficiency of the plague, took refuge in the tangible and the worldly, becoming all-too-attached to material possessions, recreation, honors, and titles. Because she was detached, she was able to assess clearly what others could not, to see what must be done when others would not.

It was this detachment that made her the necessary instrument to bring the vacillating and weak Pope Gregory XI back from Avignon to Rome. “Be a manly man,” she urged him. “Wanting to live in peace is often the greatest cruelty. When the boil has come to a head it must be cut with the lance and burned with fire and if that is not done, and only a plaster is put on it the corruption will spread and that is often worse than death. I wish to see you as a manly man so that you may serve the Bride of Christ without fear, and work spiritually and temporally for the glory of God according to the needs of that sweet Bride in our times.”

Read it all.

Today's the feast of St Catherine of Siena, 14th Century Italian mystic and Doctor of the Church. She's on the left in this glass at Blakeney, Norfolk, with St Theresa of Avila, St Agnes and St Bridget of Sweden by Powell & Sons, installed in 1912 as part of what is I think their… pic.twitter.com/bs8jzeRBVY

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) April 29, 2024

Everlasting God, who didst so kindle the flame of holy love in the heart of blessed Catherine of Siena, as she meditated on the passion of thy Son our Savior, that she devoted her life to the poor and the sick, and to the peace and unity of the Church: Grant that we also may share in the mystery of Christ’s death, and rejoice in the revelation of His Glory, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

29 Apr 1380: d. Catherine of Siena, 3rd Order Dominican, writer & Doctor of Church, aged 33.

Giovanni di Paolo
St Catherine of Siena Dictating Her Dialogues, between 1447 and 1449

(Detroit Institute of Arts) pic.twitter.com/iT15oGGy1T

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 29, 2024

O God our Father, whose law is a law of liberty: Grant us wisdom to use aright the freedom which thou hast given us, by surrendering ourselves to thy service; knowing that, when we are thy willing bondsmen, then only are we truly free; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

—New Every Morning (The Prayer Book Of The Daily Broadcast Service) [BBC, 1900]

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

–1 Thessalonians 4:13-18