Common Decency

A recent survey revealed that the majority of people believe in a controlled, supervised, and extremely limited form of assisted dying for those who are suffering, and whose death is close and will be otherwise painful and likely isolated.

W hen my daughter Lucy was a tiny child, just turned four years old, I took her to see The Nutcracker, in Toronto, that annual event of pristine Christmas escapism.

R ecently we celebrated Father’s Day. I’m the father of four, and only after I became a dad did I understand my own father. Oh, the memories: happy and sad, joyous and tearful.

L ast month The Church of Scotland, once considered arch-conservative, voted to allow its clergy to conduct same-sex marriages.

F orgiveness is vital. Its angry and fierce absence within contemporary discourse has turned social media, and even the greater public conversation, into an increasingly cold and dark place.

I n the October before the lockdown I was in London having lunch with the chaplain of one of Britain’s most famous and successful soccer teams.

N ancy Pelosi’s eternal soul is, apparently, in deep, dark danger. This, at least, is the opinion of Salvatore Cordileone, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco.

I begin and end every day with formal prayer. Glutton that I am, I also pray throughout the day, both in an organized manner in church, and while I’m simply walking and being. It rather comes with the job, in that I’m an Anglican priest.

L et us say grace, as it were. The 60s are beguiling. I don’t mean the 1960s. I was born in 1959 and couldn’t say “permissive society” back then, let alone live it.

T here is nothing Christian about allowing women to die in illegal backstreet abortions. Nothing Christian about removing the basic right of a woman to control her own body. Nothing Christian about wanting to criminalize female equality.