The Synod’s failure to vote for such an approach, but to prefer more time to explore the legal and logistical barriers to outsourcing diocesan safeguarding teams while simultaneously creating a new, independent scrutiny body, was, Mr Myer said, “deeply disappointing”.

The decision, he said, “did not follow the recommendation from Professor Jay and many other specialists and professionals, or the preference of many survivors”.

Two separate surveys have suggested that about three-quarters of the victims and survivors questioned supported Professor Jay’s recommendations; but her advice was not supported by all safeguarding professionals.

Jim Gamble, the head of the INEQE Safeguarding Group, which is auditing all Church of England dioceses and cathedrals, was among those to disagree with Professor Jay. In a report published the day before the Synod’s debate, he wrote: “When it comes to delivering effective safeguarding practice — practice that genuinely works and makes a difference — it is most effectively delivered from within, not imposed from without”….

Read it all.

In a House of Commons debate on Monday evening, MPs criticised the General Synod’s decision last month not to outsource all safeguarding functions immediately to an independent body https://t.co/phh7IAy7FJ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 6, 2025

In this light, we can see that the dizzying changes of the past decade represent the dying lurches of a postwar consensus and a re-enchantment of the West. History, contra Fukuyama, is not linear, and epochal shifts will often entail volatility as the old order grapples with its demise. In other words, Pew’s RLS data is more evidence of what N.S. Lyons called the “end of the Long Twentieth Century.” And it may be the strongest evidence yet that we’ve truly turned the page.

Lyons is following Rusty Reno, who sensed in his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods that the era of a Western “open society” consensus was coming to an end. In its place, “strong gods” would return. These strong gods “are the objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.” While the twentieth century saw an attempt to domesticate the strong gods through the promotion of weak ones like “inclusion” and “multiculturalism,” the quest has proved futile. These weak gods stand in negation to certain values—“anti-racism” or “anti-totalitarianism”—and are therefore incapable of stirring the aspirational loyalty necessary for a cohesive society.  

But not all strong gods are equally benevolent. Some can be quite destructive. Reno argued that to counteract the rougher edges of strong gods like nationalism, we will need “to nurture to primeval sources of solidarity that limit the claims of the civic ‘we’: the domestic society of marriage and the supernatural community of the church, synagogue, and other communities of transcendence.”

Thus, we can say that religion is perhaps the strongest of the strong gods….

Read it all.

Read more in @commonplc, an essential journal: https://t.co/FNH7Z8pLNd

— Emile Doak (@EADoak) March 6, 2025

The idea of national repentance seems at first sight to provide such an edifying contrast to that national self-righteousness of which England is so often accused and with which she entered (or is said to have entered) the last war, that a Christian naturally turns to it with hope. Young Christians especially-last-year undergraduates and first-year curates- are turning to it in large numbers. They are ready to believe that England bears part of the guilt for the present war, and ready to admit their own share in the guilt of England. What that share is, I do not find it easy to determine. Most of these young men were children, and none of them had a vote or the experience which would enable them to use a vote wisely, when England made many of those decisions to which the present disorders could plausibly be traced. Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done?

If they are, it might be supposed that their error is very harmless: men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable. But what actually happens (I have watched it happening) to the youthful national penitent is a little more complicated than that. England is not a natural agent, but a civil society. When we speak of England’s actions we mean the actions of the British government. The young man who is called upon to repent of England’s foreign policy is really being called upon to repent the acts of his neighbor; for a foreign secretary or a cabinet minister is certainly a neighbor. And repentance presupposes condemnation. The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing-but, first, of denouncing-the conduct of others.

–-C.S. Lewis, “Dangers of national repentance”

"Jesus is not a figure from the past: He continues now and always to light the way for us." – #PopeFrancis #ThursdayafterAshWednesday

📷 The Suffering Christ / © 1971yes / #GettyImages. #Catholic_Priest #CatholicPriestMedia #Lent2025 pic.twitter.com/jRMnpho0rb

— Catholic Priest Media (@Catholic_Priest) March 6, 2025

On that Wednesday, throughout the world,
as it is appointed, priests bless
clean ashes in church, and then lay them
on people’s heads, so that they may remember
that they came from earth and will return again to dust,
just as Almighty God said to Adam,
after he had sinned against God’s command:
‘In labour you shall live and in sweat you shall eat
your bread upon the earth, until you return again
to the same earth from which you came,
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’
This is not said about the souls of mankind,
but about their bodies, which moulder to dust,
and shall again on Judgement Day, through the power of our Lord,
rise from the earth, all who ever lived,
just as all trees quicken again in the season of spring
which were deadened by the winter’s chill.

Read it all.

'Þu eart dust and to duste gewendst.' An Anglo-Saxon Ash Wednesday and the link between Lent and spring: https://t.co/gW6skHKmRv

The word 'Lent' comes from the Old English word for spring, 'lencten', the season when the days are lengthening. pic.twitter.com/gDszcwXwJe

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) March 2, 2022

Divine Physician, your Name is blessed for the work and witness of the Mayos and the Menningers, and the revolutionary developments that they brought to the practice of medicine. As Jesus went about healing the sick as a sign of the reign of God come near, bless and guide all those inspired to the work of healing by thy Holy Spirit, that they may follow his example for the sake of thy kingdom and the health of thy people; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever.

In 1931, Dr. William J. Mayo observed, "Each day, as I go through the hospitals surrounded by younger men [and women], they give me of their dreams and I give them of my experience, and I get the better of the exchange." #MedEd https://t.co/5lMYFAjGZD

— Mayo Clinic Transplantation Surgery (@MCTransplntSurg) March 3, 2025

Holy God, you know the disorder of our sinful lives: by your Spirit set straight, our crooked hearts, and bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (slightly edited; KSH).

As we begin the season of Lent, let us put down deep roots of hope by connecting with God.

Find ways to follow our daily Lent reflections at https://t.co/GS18VO42Db.#LivingHope pic.twitter.com/qJB769pCAj

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) March 5, 2025

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
so you will dwell in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.

–Psalm 37:3-5

Bishop Báez writes: The ashes on our foreheads remind us we are dust and to dust we shall return. But we’re dust shaped by God’s hands, into which He breathed the breath of life (cf. Gen 2:7). We’re dust loved by God, called to do good and live forever. #AshWednesday https://t.co/gdzP44niVF

— Carmelite Quotes @carmelitequotes (@carmelitequotes) March 5, 2025