We are at the end of the Season of Creation, a special period of prayer and reflection which the Catholic Church observes from 1st September to 4th October each year. This year the Holy Father will publish a new letter on care for creation on Wednesday 4th October, following his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’.
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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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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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In this longer article, Archbishop of Southwark, Most Rev John Wilson, argues that re-evangelisation and the revival of a Christian culture is necessary if we are to successfully make progress in addressing public policy challenges
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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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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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At present I am waiting for my daughter’s Covid vaccination appointment. My daughter, now an adult, has profound severe multiple disabilities. She cannot tell me if she feels ill or in pain, and certainly not if she has lost her sense of smell. Like many people with disabilities, especially those with learning disabilities, when it comes to health and social care it is easy for my daughter to fall through the gaps.
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