Governments at the recent COP26 conference agreed to accelerate efforts to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. The qualifier is a little worrying, but it is not clear what it means so I will ignore it for the purposes of this article.
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Some of you may be familiar with the phrase “technocratic paradigm” from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato si’. But what is he talking about? I define it as an all-encompassing expression of a technical way of thinking.
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The series of events run by the Benedict XVI Centre, Together for the Common Good, Caritas Social Action Network and the Centre for Social Justice is coming to an end with an in-person event on November 16th.
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‘To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it’. These words from G.K. Chesterton’s A Short History of England are a salutary reminder to those who claim certain rights. And now, not for the first time, a new right has been proposed: the right to die. Over the last few years a number of bills advocating for a change in the law to allow for assisted dying or a right to die have been brought before Parliament. All have so far failed. Yet, the assisted suicide campaign continues.
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Sometimes – it looks as if we are gradually emerging from the pandemic, leaving the worst behind us. But then there are probably times when even over the past few months most of us have felt hugely disorientated, lying awake wondering where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?
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St. Mary’s University has been a leader in research in the area of modern slavery for a number of years, especially through the work of the Bakhita Centre.
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In ‘Refuge Reimagined – Biblical Kinship in Global Politics’ Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville have created an innovative inter-disciplinary way to rethink conversations surrounding refugees and displaced people. Drawing on both theology and the subject area of international relations, each discipline representing the authors’ separate academic fields, Mark Glanville and Luke Glanville challenge us to rethink and re-imagine current arguments as individuals, as church communities, as a nation and as a globe, proposing instead a more compassionate response grounded in the notion of a biblical ethic of kinship.
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Some would say that the National Insurance hike of 1.25% for each of employers and employees, Boris Johnson seems to have all but erased the (already thin-wearing) conservative ideology found within the Conservative party. However, there are some broader debates that we should be having that do not cross party lines.
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Catholic social teaching rarely seems to touch on issues of death, dying, bereavement and so on, except, of course, in debates around euthanasia and medical choices made when caring for those close to death. But what about questions related to the care of those who are close to death, bereavement and the practicalities that inevitably arise when a member of the family dies? Many of the usual questions that are raised by Catholic social teaching pertain. What should be the role of the family, civil society, the Church and the state? How is the common good best promoted, remembering that the common good is about bringing society to a higher state of perfection? We cannot do that unless we are faithful companions to those who are dying and help those who are bereaved.
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The UK system of health provision is unusual. Our death rate from Covid is also unusual. It is widely reported that our figure for deaths per million of population is one of the highest in the developed world. We could look at this figure and put the blame in all sorts of places. If only we had tightened borders more quickly, we would have had fewer cases, and fewer deaths; if only we imposed lockdown more quickly; if only we had a population more willing to comply with the state’s desire to track and trace us; if only we were on two islands 2,500 miles from the next nearest large country; and so on…
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