The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member’s motion is to argue at next month’s General Synod meeting.

Proposed by the Revd Alex Frost, a priest in Burnley who left school at 15 and worked full-time in the retail sector to fund his ministerial training (Comment, Podcast, 26 April 2024), the motion calls on the Ministry Development Board to produce a “national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of people from working-class backgrounds”.

In his paper accompanying the motion, Mr Frost says that working-class people often find it difficult to respond to a calling to ministry because of middle-class expectations and assumptions throughout the Church.

”The first concern should be whether a person is called by God to a given ministry,” he writes. “Whether they have tattoos or a strong regional accent should not be held against them.”

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The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member’s motion is to argue at next month’s General Synod meeting https://t.co/8ZAXzl6oaw pic.twitter.com/fPHH7yexqQ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 28, 2025

Almost overnight, DeepSeek has upended many of the assumptions inside Silicon Valley about the economics of building AI, as well as the best technical methods for developing the technology and the extent of the US lead over competitors in China. For much of the past two-plus years since ChatGPT kicked off the global AI frenzy, the industry has bet that the path to better AI depends largely on spending heavily on more advanced chips from companies like Nvidia Corp. and increasingly massive data centers to house them.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the development as “good, because you don’t have to spend as much money.” Industry leader Nvidia, whose shares took a huge hit from DeepSeek’s debut, also lauded it as an “excellent AI advancement” in a statement on Monday.

The market fallout was staggering. Hype over DeepSeek’s feat drove a nearly $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks on Monday as investors questioned the spending plans of some of America’s biggest companies. The share plunge in AI chipmaker Nvidia alone erased roughly $589 billion in market value, the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.

Meanwhile, in DC, lawmakers are left to figure out the best route to beat back China’s progress on a technology some see as crucial to its military and economy, given the Biden administration’s chip export curbs were not enough. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said DeepSeek shows the global AI race will be very competitive — while blaming the Biden administration for regulation that “hamstrung” AI development.

Further complicating matters, the renewed uncertainty over large AI investments comes just days after Trump championed a $100 billion joint venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. to boost US competitiveness by investing in data centers and other physical infrastructure. Now, there are new questions about the rationale for stratospheric AI budgets.

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The censorship part here is eerie. Had a physical reaction while reading that.

Bloomberg: DeepSeek Challenges Everyone’s Assumptions About AI Costs https://t.co/8ewlGlxrkD pic.twitter.com/0R1ns25aoM

— Emily Binder (@emilybinder) January 28, 2025

The danger, though, is that at least for some of us, disillusionment can easily give way to cynicism. The cynicism of our moment comes in at least two forms. One is an opportunistic kind of cynicism. This is the kind that determines that no one is really sincere and that the whole world is divided into two simple categories: hucksters and marks. The opportunistic cynic decides, then, to learn how to be a huckster. Anyone who doesn’t is a sucker or a loser, in this view.

That makes things much easier for the opportunistic cynic because, among other things, it gives an immediate intellectual shortcut. One need not actually think about what’s true and what’s false, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s right and what’s wrong. All the opportunistic cynic has to think about is what works. Once the cynic knows who the “friends” and who the “enemies” are, he or she has the template needed to cheer on the right side and to denounce the wrong one.

The other kind of cynicism is instead despairing. If opportunistic cynicism is self-advancing, despairing cynicism is self-protecting. Once I stop expecting actual goodness or sincerity in other people or in institutions, I feel like I can’t be hurt anymore, or at least not hurt as much.

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Cynicism protects us from some initial hurt, writes @drmoore.

But in the end, “it filters out not only the genuine danger and fakeness we rightly want to avoid—it filters out everything and everyone.”https://t.co/Rx4z2A8JJc

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 23, 2025

Authentic Christian faith does not fear reason “but seeks it out and has trust in it”. Faith presupposes reason and perfects it. Nor does human reason lose anything by opening itself to the content of faith. When reason is illumined by faith, it “is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God”. The Holy Father observes that St Thomas thinks that human reason, as it were, “breathes” by moving within a vast horizon open to transcendence. If, instead, “a person reduces himself to thinking only of material objects or those that can be proven, he closes himself to the great questions about life, himself and God and is impoverished”. Such a person has far too summarily divorced reason from faith, rendering asunder the very dynamic of the intellect.

What does this mean for Catholic universities today? Pope Benedict answers in this way: “The Catholic university is [therefore] a vast laboratory where, in accordance with the different disciplines, ever new areas of research are developed in a stimulating confrontation between faith and reason that aims to recover the harmonious synthesis achieved by Thomas Aquinas and other great Christian thinkers”. When firmly grounded in St Thomas’ understanding of faith and reason, Catholic institutions of higher learning can confidently face every new challenge on the horizon, since the truths discovered by any genuine science can never contradict the one Truth, who is God himself.

Read it all from 2010.

Today's the feast of St Thomas Aquinas, 13th Century Dominican friar and philosopher. Here he is in glass by Powell & Sons at Mautby, Norfolk, 1936. He's the patron saint of academics. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/JwknTr0LA3

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) January 28, 2025

Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow upon us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know thee, diligence to seek thee, wisdom to find thee, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential theologians and philosophers in Western history, made numerous contributions to philosophy, theology, and the broader intellectual life. Here are 20 quotes from the "Angelic Doctor" to contemplate on this, his feast day. pic.twitter.com/jI82wcqFwZ

— Catholic Frequency (@CatholicFQ) January 28, 2025

O God, who art the God of peace, mercifully grant that, as much as lieth in us, we may live at peace with all men; and if our outward peace be broken, yet do thou preserve peace in our hearts; through him who is the Prince of peace, Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Winter mornings can shine with such soft, quiet colours, the light muted, a whisper rather than a shout. This is the Cromford Canal, one of my favourite spots for a sunrise walk, when the only noises come from the sleepy ducks and the ripples on the water. I stood for a long… pic.twitter.com/llY5ykvRip

— peaklass (@peaklass1) January 28, 2025

He went away from there and came to his own country; and his disciples followed him. And on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue; and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works are wrought by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.

–Mark 6:1-6

Sunrise this morning at the Bridge to Nowhere in downtown Walpole, Mass.#sunrise #walpolema @ShiriSpear @NWSBoston @StormHour @VisitMA @DowntownWalpole pic.twitter.com/u04f4KkO2E

— VisitingNewEngland – Eric's Stories of New England (@NewEnglandInfo) January 28, 2025