The modern mantra of “equality, diversity and inclusion” (EDI) is proclaimed with alacrity in the corporate and education worlds. This is an important agenda, if understood correctly, but the phrase is often used to close down rather than open up discussions.
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There are clear signs e.g. here, here and here that rapid climate change is no longer a possibility that can be dismissed. Indeed, if the analogy of a boiling kettle being a tipping point that is preceded by fizzing as an indicator that the water is about to boil is relevant, current indications might mean that rapid and even runaway climate change is upon us.
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The Radio 4 programme, the Moral Maze, explores various controversial moral and philosophical issues each week with a panel who question a diverse group of “witnesses”. As it was the last show before the summer holidays, the 30th July episode explored idleness – or, strictly speaking, leisure.
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‘We incarcerate more people than any other country in Europe. Far too many people in our prison system are there as a result of mental illness. And every year, for far too many people, prison is a death sentence, as a consequence of suicide or violence.’ This is how Pact’s CEO Andy Keen-Downs opened our 10th Sir Harold Hood Memorial Lecture event last week.
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Talk to Oxford University Students by Lord Alton of Liverpool
I want you to imagine Marie. It is 2025 and Marie is a 15-year-old Canadian girl. Three months ago, her relationship with her first boyfriend ended and she remains heartbroken. Life doesn’t seem worth living anymore. Her self-esteem has plummeted. She feels less popular, less attractive and less talented than most of her friends at school. And, in her state of distress, she reasons the rest of her life will be worthless and miserable. Not uncommon for girls her age, Marie has been ill with anorexia in recent years. Her recent circumstances have led her to relapse. So, her parents take her to the local psychiatric hospital to see a doctor.
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For most couples, the desire to have children is deeply imbedded in their relationship. After all, human beings are made for love and children are a real expression of love. So, when couples discover that they cannot have children this can be devastating. On the other hand, some couples, notably same sex couples, enter their union knowing from the outset that having their own children together is impossible, yet they still yearn to be parents, as do some single people who are not in any relationship. ‘Welcoming’ a child via a surrogate mother seems to provide the answer. Influential celebrities who use surrogate mothers have become role models for surrogacy and hold out this as an option for all. However, the desire to be a mother or father does not justify any right to have a child. Children have the right to be born in their own real families with their own mother and father.
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I remember the scene clearly: it was just after midnight and the house lights were switched on in the auditorium of the Teatro Argentina in Rome. Moving from stage lighting to the lighting of the whole house was meant to affirm the role of the audience in the dawning of a democratic process in Eumenides, the third play in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia cycle, as a vote is cast on Orestes’ charge. Is he guilty or innocent? Athena, then, declares the theatre to be a court crowded with people. Sadly, while the lights revealed the glories of the theatre’s internal box features, it also revealed how the seats had emptied during the performance. As the show ran so late, many of the spectators had to leave early to catch public transport.
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In his encyclical, Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis highlights the related practices of slavery, trafficking in person, women subjugated and forced to abort and kidnapping for organ harvesting or organ trafficking. He notes that, whether by coercion, deception, or by physical or psychological duress, human persons, created in the image and likeness of God, are deprived of their freedom, sold, and reduced to being another person’s property.
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This week’s post on the Catholic social thought blog is a bit different. Instead of the usual article written by one of our authors, the article is a reflection on the document published by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Love the Stranger, which has been produced by youchat which is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Specifically, youchat was asked to produce an article summarising the document. The article follows (no changes have been made to the original produced by youchat).
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St. Mary’s University hosts the Centre for the Art of Dying Well, directed by Maggie Doherty: artofdyingwell.org Maggie recently appeared on the Radio 4 programme, Beyond Belief.
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