De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

When t he story broke about the Archdiocese of Southwark standing up for children in Catholic Schools, I recognised this could be a crunch point for Catholic education in the UK. The pressure on Catholic schools has been slowly increasing, just as it did before Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close . The problem is, Catholic Schools face an enemy on the inside: teachers who are antagonistic to the Catholic ethos they agree to promote. Faced with a forced closure on Thursday, due to striking staff who said they were “fighting for inclusive education” and against a “very concerning precedent for LGBT rights and representation in schools”, the Archdiocese has come out fighting! Writing in The Catholic Network , Joseph Kelly says : It seems hard to accept that the school chose to emphasise simply that this was an obviously well-known and talented new writer, without giving any thought to the material he represented. Kelly continues: it is perfectly in order for a Catholic schoo...

  Well it's LGBTQI+ History month folks and the best place for LGBTQI+ advocates to push their queer agenda is in Catholic Schools (apparently). Some schools - the majority I suspect - happily embrace this political agenda being foisted on them, despite recent legislation to the contrary , the key point of which was to spell out schools' obligations "to be mindful of legal duties on political impartiality during these events and thoroughly assess both the organisations in question and any materials they provide.” Why? Well, as pointed out in a recent BBC special in depth investigation  Stonewall - the organisation which most prominently seeks to promote this agenda in Catholic Schools, is not impartial, but a lobby group who profit greatly from their own schemes. Stonewall's total income for the financial year ending 2019 was almost £8.5m. They are a powerful force. Nevertheless some Catholic schools proudly declare themselves Stonewall Schools. Despite the image pres...

Tis the season of bishop's pastoral letters! Our Bishop here in Brentwood Diocese Alan Williams sm, appears to really be working hard on the themes he considers Pope Francis to be prioritising, e.g.: It can sometimes seem impossible to glimpse the things of heaven in today’s world. We are confronted with the needs of refugees, the appalling struggles faced by victims of trafficking, the enduring realities of war and injustice. Sometimes there has been an absence of compassion and kindness even within the community of the Church which have caused great scandal regardless of faith. Young people notice and name most acutely this mismatch between aspiration and reality. It is often our young who have been prophetic in talking about climate change and its potentially terrible consequences. It's like he has squeezed all the Pope's "new religion" into one paragraph; climate change, immigration, our desperately uncatechised young people as prophetic leaders of th...