Dear Friends,

With Christmas already behind us, 2021 is drawing to its close. To describe it as a strange year would be an understatement. Indeed, the last two years have been unlike anything that most of us have experienced during our lifetimes. What has been different during this last year has been the availability of vaccines and other drug related treatments which has meant that Covid has become at least to a degree more manageable; although at no little cost to the financial well-being of certain sectors of the economy as well as the still hidden cost in terms of many people’s long term mental health, and many children and young people’s education and employment prospects. One of the mantras we have heard so often during this time has been, ‘follow the science’ – and of course given the pressure scientists have been under, it is understandable that for some people their findings remain controversial and hence their caution – but many, myself included, have been persuaded enough to have the vaccine. I can respectfully disagree with those who uphold rational arguments to the contrary, but I find it extraordinary that there are those who invoke their religious – their Christian – faith as justification for not ‘following the science’. Science and religion have always had an uneasy relationship. Each taking it in turns to elbow the other out of the picture as far as one’s mind’s eye is concerned. All this has done is impoverish our appreciation of the contribution each can make to our understanding of the human condition; our appreciation of our origins, our history, our environment, our future potential, our ultimate destiny. And so, we launch into 2022 on the back of the James Webb Telescope. Designed to replace the older Hubble Telescope, and suitably updated such that it provides us with the realistic prospect of looking back in time some 13 thousand million years to perhaps catch a glimpse of what happened when our universe came into being. As a person of faith, I am excited by the prospect. I have a natural curiosity that needs to be satisfied and if science is able to make a contribution in this regard, then thank God for science and for scientists. It is why I will always be supportive of using so-called ‘public’ money to fund scientific enquiry. But what we cannot afford to do is allow malign influences to manipulate its application. There is need to ensure a ‘Godly’ science; a moral compass oriented towards the common good, a political will to share its benefits, a spiritual dimension that preserves what the hymn writer describes thus, ‘…O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works Thy hands have made…’ – such that in the midst of everything is located the sublime miracle of grace – ‘…Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered…’ The fabric of the universe, the whole universe, is fashioned out of love – Divine love – and were the fabric itself to wear out, we proclaim that love would remain. Our hope is for a happier, and more fulfilling 2022, and it is in that Spirit that I commend it to you all…

Farewell 2022