This week is Holy Week, which is the seven days that lead up to Easter Sunday.
Perhaps then we should feel obliged to have a look at what is on offer in the religious newspapers?
The Tablet, a magazine published in London – you have seen reference to it in these pages more than once previously- takes its news lead from the Middle East.
And informs us that Israeli authorities confirmed that local Church leaders would have access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Holy Week after preventing Catholic clergy from celebrating Mass there on Palm Sunday.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and the Custos of the Holy Land, Fr Francesco Ielpo OFM, published a joint protest on Sunday after police barred them from entering the church that morning.
Religious and political leaders around the world condemned the police action as a violation of religious freedom.
Several thousand Christians joined an estimated half a million people to march through London on 28 March to bear witness to a message of welcome and solidarity, against racism and the far-right weaponisation of Christian identity.
The Together Alliance march, which aimed to show “love, hope and unity” in response to Tommy Robinson’s nationalist “unite the kingdom” march in September, is believed to have been one of the biggest multicultural demonstrations in British history.
In the JRS group, one of the demonstrators, who has lived experience of forced migration from Eritrea, revealed that this was his first-ever demonstration. He had never previously imagined he would join one, because in his home country, “if there’s a protest, usually someone gets killed”.
The Prime Minister, right, and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, left, have discussed the importance of walking together. At 10 Downing Street’s Easter reception, Sir Keir Starmer, centre, said: “Government and faith should not be two separate things operating in separate spheres. Many of the values we hold are the same, and therefore we should be trying to work in partnership wherever we can.” So, politics and religion do mix. Rev Dr John McPake, the Church of Scotland’s ecumenical officer, and the Rt Rev Rosie Frew, Moderator of the General Assembly, were in Canterbury last week for the induction of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In Dublin, between 1884 and 1885, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a series of sonnets filled with anguish and near-despair, crying out in abandonment, like Jesus from the Cross. Gradually, the light returned, explains the American poet Paul Mariani, who is a notable Manley Hopkins scholar.
To be the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington when the United States has launched an illegal and irresponsible war in the Middle East is no small matter. Cardinal McElroy opines that non-violence must now be central to the Catholic “just war” tradition.
This is because of the sheer level of destructiveness of modern weaponry, the totality of modern war, and the way that just-war reasoning is vulnerable nowadays to co-option. The contemptuous casting aside of traditional Catholic principles of restraint in war, often by supposedly Christian leaders, has exposed how unapologetically pagan the powers of this world have become.
This week’s leader in The Tablet asks: who will shout “Stop – this is madness”? The Middle East resembles two runaway trains hurtling towards each other on the same track, seconds from a catastrophe. They are heading nowhere. The dynamic equilibrium of the world economy depends on energy supplies, which at this stage in human history still means fossil fuels – oil and natural gas. The cost depends on the balance between supply and demand. Scarcity drives up prices and drives down living standards. But such economies are generally in an unstable balance. There is a limit to the shocks they can absorb. Pushed too far, they fall over.