Peter D Toon's blog

  What on earth was THAT all about? At Evensong in Canterbury Cathedral, as at Daily Offices throughout the world, short passages from the Bible are read; usually one from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, and one from early Christian writings, the New Testament. Most days between one and two hundred people attend these services, joined by up to two tor three thousand online. Man, perhaps most, of these will be familiar with Christian worship. Some of us are fortunate enough to live in Canterbury, so the Cathedral is our spiritual home. A lot more come as pilgrims or visitors to Canterbury from churches of various traditions around the world, or log in from their homes. All these people will be used to hearing the Bible read in this way. But people of many other faith backgrounds also come to Canterbury Cathedral, drawn by its architecture and/or fine musical tradition, and some of them come to Evensong. They may be Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Shintoists or those (accord...

 Assisted Dying Debate Life has got even more complicated since my last post, but I hope to pick up the threads of this blog from now on. Do comment or email me if you want to discuss anything I write. A debate on “assisted dying” is planned to take place at the end of November. Against the presumed benefits a change in the law risks some terrible consequences, so I wrote to my MP asking her to vote against this. Below are the arguments I made in my letter; if you agree with them then I urge you to write to your parliamentary representative too. Those arguing for a change in the law stress the right of patients to choose and the risk of uncontrolled suffering in terminal illness. An issue less often mentioned is the cost of good end-of-life care, which in my experience can almost always control suffering in terminal illness. In a cash strapped and under-resourced NHS where consequentialist arguments are commonly used this may lead some well meaning people to see assiste...