Those who take refuge in our midst should not be viewed as a heavy burden to be borne: if we consider them instead as brothers and sisters, they will appear to us above all as gifts

Pope Francis, speech at Rencontres Méditerranéennes, Marseilles, 23 September

My association with Christmas is something I used to get a bit fed up about. I felt like saying: “I am active for the other 11 months of the year, you know.” [Now] I guess I would much rather be associated with a season of peace and goodwill than with famine, plague and pestilence. And carols are a form of folk art. You feel you are carrying on a tradition stretching back hundreds of years

John Rutter, composer, interview in The Times, 27 September

I’m quite spiritual. Almost all the musicians I know are comfortable with the mysterious and the transcendental, because music itself works in mysterious ways. And I also believe that when you are setting a text you should enter fully into it. So when I am setting a religious text I am profoundly religious. When I go back into everyday life, however, I pass into a slightly more sceptical state. But I do know I wouldn’t be the person I am without that Christian background

Ibid.

Those trimming faith to fit in with culture have tended to shrink, and those offering a “full-fat” faith, vividly supernatural, have tended to grow. This is as true of the ultra-liturgical Orthodox as it is of the ultra-informal Pentecostals

David Goodhew, statistician, quoted in The Spectator, 23 September

This administration will go down in history as the most anti-LGBT government in a generation. It will take as long for LGBT+ people & our allies to trust them again — broken promises always lead to broken trust, which sadly leads to lives endangered & even tragically lost

Jayne Ozanne, Synod member and campaigner, Twitter, commenting on reports that ban on conversion therapy is to be dropped, 24 September

It was common for churches to sell beer in the Middle Ages. “Church ales” were one of the more enjoyable ways of raising money for fabric repairs. The incumbent of St Ia in St Ives, Cornwall, who has been criticised for installing beer pumps, might just have saved his church

Michael Heaton, letter, The Daily Telegraph, 23 September

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