Councillors in a small Yorkshire town have criticised plans by senior Church leaders to agree a common date for Easter after centuries of disagreement. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby and Pope Francis have both backed efforts to find a unified date.
The town of Whitby hosted a synod in AD 664 at which it was decided that the Kingdom of Northumbria would follow the Roman tradition for the date of Easter rather than the Celtic one. Although heavily influenced by Irish missionaries, chiefly St Aidan, the Northumbrians chose to conform with Rome. Kent, the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom to turn Christian, had been converted by Roman missionaries.
Councillor Joe Plant told the Whitby Gazette: “The procedure has been in place for centuries – why change it? It would be disrespectful to Whitby.”
He added: “The abbey and the synod of 664 are synonymous with Whitby and we have many pilgrims to the town as a result. There have been no problems with Easter being a movable feast. It is possible to work out the date for decades ahead through the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. If it isn’t broken, why go about trying to change it?”
Heather Coughlan, the town’s mayor, told the paper: “Whitby jealously guards its history and heritage of which the synod and [the explorer] Captain James Cook are a major part. I don’t think it necessary to interfere with something which has worked well for 1,400 years and I’m sure the people of Whitby will take the same view. It sounds more like a suggestion from an office manager than the Church.”
IVF revolution ‘is another step down the slippery slope’
The ivf industry is pushing Britain into more unethical practices, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has said. Its warning came after “the next IVF revolution” was announced in national newspapers, with medical breakthroughs that would allow older women to have more successful treatment.
Doctors in Nottingham want to “turbocharge” weak eggs by using young cells taken from elsewhere in a patient’s ovaries. The new treatment features mitochondrial transfer to the egg, the same used in so-called “three-parent embryos”, which would mean a modification of the human embryos.
Paul Tully, SPUC’s deputy chief executive, said: “The latest proposal indicates that allowing treatment for mitochondrial disease is another stage on the slippery slope. Once the technique is allowed for one purpose, it will be used for other reasons.
“Very soon the techniques will be used in ways which public, political and scientific opinion initially rejected. The future of the human race, and the fate of the embryos who would be destroyed to develop the new technique, are simply not priorities for the IVF industry.”
Bishop Murray dies aged 83
Tributes have been paid to Bishop Ian Murray, the former Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, who died last Friday aged 83. Scottish bishops received the news of his death while gathered in session at the Royal Scots College in Salamanca, north-west Spain, where they celebrated a Mass for him. Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow said: “On behalf of the bishops’ conference I offer Bishop Murray’s family our deepest and most prayerful sympathies.”
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