De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

In her latest article in the Catholic Herald , Katherine Bennett pertinently shines a light on the hypocrisy of a culture that rages about the murders of Lucy Letby, a nurse on a children's ward in Chester who attacked at least thirteen infants in her care between June 2015 and June 2016, killing seven of them, while celebrating the murder of unborn children in the same hospital. It is an excellent piece: How did a nurse commit such unthinkable murders? Are they really so unthinkable in a world that considers the killing of a baby with Down’s syndrome a “right”, that calls for abortion on demand up to birth? Are we so blind that we cannot see the lies, the ugliness and the evil that lurks beneath what bubbles up to the surface? How deeply corrupted is a conscience that celebrates both the abolition of the death penalty and the introduction of euthanasia for prisoners, the emancipation of women and the right to self ID, the safeguarding of children and grooming in schools? We are c...

It's difficult to blog about contentious issues. Yesterday, ministers cheered as it was announced that royal assent had been given to the Same Sex Marriage Bill, paving the way for the first same-sex weddings next spring. The Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, gave her formal approval to the Bill. I am astonished at that fact alone. What does it say about our Monarch? It surely confirms the titular nature of her position? And that being the case, one has to wonder what the point is? The divisive nature of the bill is reported by the Telegraph which tells us that its passing...  ...marks the end of the centuries-old understanding of marriage as being solely between a man and a woman in the UK. The Roman Catholic Church described it as a “watershed” in English law and said that it marked a “profound social change”. Ben Summerskill chief executive of Stonewall, said the move would “bring joy to tens of thousands of gay couples and thei...

So the teacher Jeremy Forrest, who abducted/ eloped (?) with a 15 year old student of his is sentenced today . I have to say, my mind ran immediately to the old Police hit 'Don't Stand So Close To Me', remember it? The song deals with the mixed feelings of lust, fear and guilt that a female student has for a school teacher and vice versa, as well as inappropriateness leading to confrontation. The music and lyrics of the song were written by the lead singer of The Police, Sting, who had previously worked as an English teacher. In a 2001 interview for the concert DVD ...All This Time, Sting denied that the song is autobiographical. The line "Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov" alludes to Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita which covers somewhat similar issues. Like Sting, Forrest has a musical side to his character which some, like the BBC reporter Duncan Kennedy have suggested, added to his appeal for the student who has ended up embr...

Requiescant in pace I think I am always shocked by the amount of judgemental vitriol I see on the internet. Even in cases such as this awful debacle , the rush to condemn is quite shocking in its intensity, no matter how justified it may seem. And it could hardly seem more justified than in this, a case of parents who set a fire in their own home, whilst their children slept, in an attempt to frame an ex-lover for attempted murder. This is a tragedy and demonstrative of how far reasoning has come adrift in a large swathe of society from any objective idea of what constitutes wrong and right. But Osborne  asking why tax payers subsidised Philpott's murder?  The Daily Mail utilising the revulsion society inevitably and rightly feels at this case in order to incite some kind of class hatred by bracketing those on benefits with a man who had clearly lost all sight of any moral compass is truly unacceptable. Perhaps what struck me the most today was what of the childr...

Further to the recent terrible news of the shooting in Colorado at a screening of the new Batman film  there has been a considerable amount of discussion regarding whether the perpetrator, James Holmes, should face the death penalty or not. I became involved in a discussion with some friends, who were adamant that Homes should be killed for what he had done. Certainly I share their disgust at his crimes, but consider the death penalty to be something we do not employ in civilised society. As a Catholic, I also consider it broadly disconsonant with the fundamental dignity of all human life. I also think the Church teaches us that it is a broadly unacceptable course of action today. During the discourse, all kinds of arguments were employed to try and justify recourse to capital punishment, quoting the Council of Trent for example, and suggesting that the teaching of the Church does not change. This is correct of course, the Church's teaching does not change, but it does deve...