- Good results for Nigel Farage following the English local elections in May. Terrible results for Conservative Party.
- No progress towards the marriage of same-sex couples in the Church of England
- Turbulent year for WordPress, which powers about half of the internet.
- 2025 will be the hottest year on record.
- No trade deal for UK with US. Increasing talk of re-aligning economy closer to EU.
- Ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine war but no long term solution.
- “Assisted Dying” aka doctor assisted suicide becomes legal in at least one of the jurisdictions of the British Isles.
- Turbulent year for economy but stock market higher at end of year than beginning. (FTSE currently at 8,173)
- There will be fewer Commonwealth Realms (ie countries which share the monarchy) by the end of 2025 than there are now.
- Philip Mountstephen.
4 responses to “Guest Post: Alan McManus on The Feast of St Francis”
-
Whilst the sentiment is worthy, I think you’re being a wee bit naive here Alan. Ruth may be praying for the safe return of her sons, as I will pray for my step son when he is called up for service in the IDF next year. She might also be praying that her sons don’t encounter the devastation of the Katusha rockets fired from Gaza on an almost daily basis and have to deal with dead and maimed Israeli children. They all might pray that they’re not in the bus stations in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem when some poor misguided Arab child with a bomb strapped to their back causes devastation, death and mutilation.
And Lesbian Rachael may have been ostracised from her family, but she can give thanks that Israel is the ONLY country in the middle east where her rights and equality is protected by law. Of course, if she was a palastinian in Gaza or the west bank, her sexuality would be criminalised.Your view of the activity of Israel and its army in my view is one which, if you’ll forgive my directness, is through rose tinted specs. My wife is an ex-IDF officer, and whilst there is most definitely some bad treatment of the Palastinians, it’s usually in response to many of the dangers I’ve outlined in this comment. We should be lighting candles perhaps for the Israeli government and constitution which provides free health care and education for all it’s citizens, be they Arab, Jew, or anything else, including LGBT. These are the real poor in Israel and they are protected. This is not apartheid, and to compare it to the system in South Africa under which my wife grew up is, quite frankly, offensive to most Israelis and many others.
Sorry if this comment upsets you, but I’m sure Francis would have been apolitical in this. His concern might well have been the poor, but he might have seen that the poor are the misguided people in this world who are too quick to condem Israel from the comfort of their western armchairs…
Jaye
-
Well-intentioned but naive isn’t the harshest criticism a post involving this Near-Eastern politicial knife edge could have attracted, so I thank you. My mother’s maiden name is Jewish; I spent some months on a kibbutz in the 80’s; I think I was the worst student of Hebrew that St Mary’s College, St Andrews Uni, ever had; I only avoided being elected president of St Andrews Jewish student society (I was the oldest member) by declaring, “I shouldn’t be the president: I’m goy!”; I think that Eretz Yisrael is a beautiful, fascinating and deeply tragic place and I admire your commitment to primary human realtionships and share your exasperation of uninformed, unbalanced and uninvolved politics-as-entertainment.
I also have many Muslim friends, some Western, who repeat to me that the root of the problem is the oppression of the Palestinians. Not all are uneducated fanatics.
The following links, which could not (for technical reasons) be linked to phrases in my original post, may help to contextualise my words. I do not strive for dominance of the discourse but rather to question adherence to party lines and easy answers. You defend those you love, Jaye, as you should, and that love is a candle in a deep deep darkness. But there are other candles, across the barbed wire and beyond no-man’s land.http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/whfraintro.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/29/atos-paralympic-sponsors-under-fire-disabled-attitude_n_1838614.html
http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc22500.htm
http://www.asylumaid.org.uk/data/files/publications/46/Still_No_Reason_At_All.pdf
http://beyondcompromise.com/2012/08/17/everybody-must-get-stoned/
http://www.no2brandisrael.org/?p=324
http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php?q=taxonomy/term/60
http://muslimmatters.org/2009/07/16/islamic-jerusalem-%E2%80%9Cwe-will-drive-the-jews-into-the-sea%E2%80%9D-1-of-3/
http://www.ranker.com/list/7-worst-capital-punishments-for-being-_illegally_-gay/joanne
http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/2012/03/13/israeli-settlers-cut-down-150-olive-and-grape-trees-in-wad-abu-reesh/
http://electronicintifada.net/content/demanding-justice-yousef-quiet-boy-killed-israeli-settlers/10865
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-citizens-are-equal.html?_r=0
http://israelisoldiersmother.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1757
http://artsandfaith.com/t100/jesusofmontreal.html
http://liberatingtheology.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/theology-and-liberating-praxis-theology-as-second-act/
http://robertpirsig.org/Intro.htm
http://www.robertpirsig.org/
http://inharmony.yolasite.com/
https://www.facebook.com/events/240919052672305/#!/tentcitytheatrecompany -
I am resuming religion at age 63. I am Cof E, but now a Buddhist….My olf McM family of Antrim became C of I in around 1670s on.
Will write more if you could reply.
AM
-
Hello Alastair,
forgive my extremely tardy reply! I only looked up this post to get the date as I’ve forgotten how old my beloved dog Ben is and I got him just after writing this post (I remember thinking I should practice what I preached and he needed a home). I don’t get notifications from this site (I have RSI and I can’t keep up) but if you click on my website link there’s a Contact page.
slán, Alan
-
Previous Posts
-
Sev’n Whole Days
Sev’n whole days, not one in sev’n,I will praise Thee. I am sure gentle reader, that every Friday, if you are like me, you wait with great eagerness for the weekly delivery of that great organ called the Church Times. And if you are indeed like me, you find yourself flicking through the front of…
-
The Bishop of St Davids and the Archbishop of Canterbury
The Rt Rev Dr Joanna Penberthy is the 129th Bishop of St Davids. In tweets that came to light recently, she exhibited an antipathy to members of the Conservative Party which did not sit well with her position. “Never, never, never trust a Tory” is not what people expect to see a bishop tweeting. Once…
-
Pollokshields – These are our neighbours
It was impossible not to be moved by people standing around an immigration enforcement van in Pollokshields yesterday chanting “These are our neighbours, let them go”. Many people today are proud of those in this city who stopped this enforcement action. Every country needs to have an immigration system and every immigration system needs to…
-
Easter Sermon 2021
Lent has been long enough. This Lent particularly has been long enough. Just over a year ago we locked down in the middle of Lent. And it feels as though that existence has been going on in one form or another ever since. Most people have embraced the need for the lockdown lives that we…
Leave a Reply