Unutterably shocking

                                                                Photo - Reuters

As the New Year gets underway with the Feast of the Epiphany, please pray for our fellow Christians in the Middle East, especially for the victims of the car bomb targeted at worshippers at a Coptic Church in Alexandria, and the attacks carried out on Christian homes in Baghdad.
This is barbarism beyond belief.
Perhaps it is now time for those who very loudly assert that their religion is a religion of peace to denounce (without the usual nuance) the more zealous of their co-religionists. They might also consider trying to explain, to them and to the world at large, exactly how this kind of murderous behaviour is both contrary to their holy book and to the history of their faith.
Diplomatic niceities alone cannot explain the deafening silence on the part of those with political influence in the West, some of whom may even be spotted in Church on a Sunday morning.

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Also, a wonderful post here from Father John Hunwicke on the subject of the ghastly 'Sunday' programme on BBC Radio 4. 
Today, and not that unusually, the content was so concerned with Islam that its producers should consider renaming it the 'Friday' programme. Yet the comments made about those Anglicans now in the process of entering into full communion with  Rome reached a nadir of bias and liberal sneering and innuendo. I cannot imagine another group of people who would be regarded as 'fair game' for the kind of comments which were made. Somehow I expected better from the BBC. I'm increasingly at a loss to explain why.

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The world seems to be divided between those who love or loathe 'The Archers.'  Having been brought up with my parents as avid followers, I listened to it regularly for a while until it became apparent that there wasn't a social bandwagon its writers weren't prepared to jump on to. I find now I can't even hear the theme music without rushing to switch off the radio. I'm told today, by a parishioner who loves the programme, that something will occur which will shock listeners to the core. I would put money on a hostage-taking or someone in green wellies running amok with a shotgun. But my preference would be a mass alien abduction -  and they could take the programme's self-proclaimed (what else?) greatest fan, one Stephen Fry, with them.