For whom the Bell tolls

‘Love created us out of love to share Love itself’ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This term, we will be looking at saints that are linked with the college, and asking the simple question – from their lives, from their writings, from their teachings, what might help us as a college and as a community to live more fully today? Starting with one of the patron saints of the college, therefore, seems apt. Initially, St Bernard seemed to me to be a really great saint to preach about. People like me, from the Catholic tradition of the Church of England and indeed Roman Catholics the world over, know of his writing even if they don’t know the author. The wonderful Marian antiphons, sung daily by monastic and religious communities around the world, are in large part derived from and influenced by his writing and preaching. This theme runs throughout his theology – it was greatly influenced by his love for and devotion t...

As we enter into the inevitable leadership challenge in the Labour Party, it’s about time Labour members, supporters and the general public were given a vision for the future. For too long, indeed since the middle of the last decade, the Labour Party hasn’t had a plan of action – hasn’t had a vision of Britain that can capture the nation. To call for a vision is not to call for yet more platitudes. It seems that ephemeral and grand statements have won over any form of policy in the past few years. This is not the difference between being practical and being principled – far from it. It is about saying that principles, if they are to be enacted, need concrete policies attached. A principle that doesn’t live through a policy is not living – it’s an interesting idea, to be debated and discussed, but not to be lived. The party, and more importantly the voters, needs policies to stand behind, and those policies have to be formulated and communicated now, and have to pr...

That the Orlando shooting was horrific is an understatement, and over the past week there have been outpourings of anger and hurt that I can’t begin to properly enunciate. To be clear, this was an attack on LGBT* people, because they were LGBT*. And that is a very scary development for so many of my friends who are LGBT* - and indeed, the more I think about it, for me. With this appalling crime comes a threat and a promise in a simple message – we are not welcome. We are not to be accepted by society, and it’s completely OK to hate us. Hate what we do, hate what we ‘do to society’, hate everything about us. And the terrifying thought is that actually, this isn’t a one-off feeling – this is how people feel about us, day in day out. Most of them don’t carry guns (or rather, most don’t use them on us) – but most of them mean it, and most of them, tacitly or openly, support measures to suppress and oppress us, and in some cases, have us imprisoned or executed. Sup...