A Christmas Statement

One from, apparently, a real Christian, and one that would be hard to disagree with, in spirit:

“We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive towards those who adhere to a minority faith,” he said.

“All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s.

“I was born in 1948 – just after the end of World War II in which my parents’ generation had fought, and died, in a battle against intolerance, monstrous extremism and an inhuman attempt to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe.

“That, nearly seventy years later, we should still be seeing such evil persecution is, to me, beyond all belief. We owe it to those who suffered and died so horribly not to repeat the horrors of the past.

“Normally, at Christmas, we think of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder, though, if this year we might remember how the story of the Nativity unfolds – with the fleeing of the Holy Family to escape violent persecution...”

“Whichever religious path we follow, the destination is the same – to value and respect the other person, accepting their right to live out their peaceful response to the love of God” 

And who might have said that?

A person who is routinely derided as an empty headed, self-absorbed twit, but who seems to have more sense and more common decency than anyone else in the British government, or certainly anyone poised to take over control of ours.  It is a sad comment when the accident of royal heredity can throw up a better person than the apparatus the European and American world has spent two and a half centuries creating.