Blog on the Learig

  8 November 2025 On 25 May 2006, Pope Benedict, the German pontiff, visited Auschwitz. One of the characteristic features of his visit was his silence. He walked alone into the concentration camp and he prayed silently before the Wall of Death where thousands were executed. When he did speak, he was standing near the ruins of the crematoria. There he spoke of the ‘dread silence’ and the unanswered question of God’s silence during the Holocaust. Describing himself as ‘a son of the German people’,   he asked for peace and reconciliation. I found his witness deeply moving. So when I was invited by the Rector of the High School of Glasgow to address the school at their assembly, I chose to speak about the Pope’s moving visit and focused my address not on the Holocaust per se but on silence. When I arrived at the school, I discovered that a group of German students had arrived to participate in the life of the school. As we stood together in the Rector’s study, I told the ...

  7 November 2025 Jane Haining is one of our kirk martyrs. In 1932, she became the Matron at the Church of Scotland Mission to the Jews in Budapest. She was responsible for the well-being of the boarders at this well-respected school in Hungary. The school catered for Christian and Jewish girls and Jane brought a lot of common sense, administrative skill, practical faith and compassion into the institution. She was greatly   admired and loved by staff and pupils alike in the school. When the Nazis invaded Hungary and started to round up the Jews, she became more vulnerable. She refused to return to Scotland preferring to stay and look after the girls. She was eventually betrayed by the son of the cook who had to be dismissed because of new Nazi laws. He wanted to live in his mother’s room in the boarding house. Jane refused. The house was full of girls. It was really a Safeguarding issue although it wouldn’t have been put into that context in those days. She wisely did...

  6 November 2025 As we make our preparations to remember those who died in time of war and to pray for the peace of a troubled earth, we reflect on the atrocities of the day and of the past and wonder why our acts of remembrance have not been able to eradicate such grotesque violence as we witness today. In his book, ‘The Nazi Mind’, Laurence Rees makes it clear how ordinary people can become animalistic killers if the right circumstances are created to encourage these traits to manifest themselves. His book is replete with examples. Consider Martin Weiss, a heating engineer from Karlsruhe in south-west Germany. Before his wartime service, people who knew him said that he was a model citizen with ‘a sense for everything noble and good’.   However, in his  treatment of Jews, he behaved with great cruelty. ‘At his post-war trial it was revealed that he shot half a dozen Jews merely because he thought they didn’t ‘behave properly’.’ writes Rees. ‘He remarked during ...

  5 November 2025 Christmas is going to be big this year! At least that’s what Caulders would have you believe. We were in the Garden Centre near Cupar recently and bought some plants. Out of interest, we had a walk round their huge display of Christmas ornaments, trees and gifts. Everything was big! I saw a very attractive bauble for a tree. It was dressed in the pattern of a harlequin in silver and red. It looked festive and fun! But it was very big. I looked again. It was fit for a 10’ Christmas Tree but our Christmas Tree is barely half the size. How many people have rooms big enough for tall trees? There were beautiful bows. Some of them were in an attractive tartan. Once again, they were very big. Were they to decorate a door. Unlike a wreath, the rain would spoil and soil it. Was it for the top of a Christmas Tree? Do people put bows on trees instead of angels and stars? My eyes looked for some signs that the merchandise would have some Christian content. I only saw ...

  4 November 2025 Two months before his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero   wrote in a Mexican newspaper, ‘ As a shepherd I am obliged by Divine Law to give my life for those I love, for the entire Salvadoran people, including those who threaten to assassinate me. If they should go as far as to carry out their threats, I want you to know that I now offer my blood to God for justice and the resurrection of El Salvador.’   A   death squad was ready. On 24 March 1980, the Archbishop was celebrating mass in a hospital chapel. He had just finished preaching his sermon.   He had come to the Liturgy of   the Sacrament. He picked up the bread, ‘ This is the body of Christ which is broken for you!’ he said. Suddenly, a   man with a pistol aimed his gun at Romero. A shot rang out.   The Archbishop fell down at the altar with the broken bread in his hands. The gunman ran off to a waiting car. People rushed to the Archbishop’s assistance but he was dead!...

  3 November 2025 In 1821, John Galt wrote,   ‘The Ayrshire Legatees’. I have a beautifully bound first edition of this novel in my possession. It was printed in Edinburgh for William Blackwood, Edinburgh and T. Caddell, Strand, London in 1821. It has a handsome font and an easy read. It’s all about the Pringle Family and a legacy which has been left to Dr. Zechariah Pringle, minister at Garnock Parish Church. He and his wife, son and daughter journey to London to deal with the legacy. Whilst there, Dr. Pringle and his wife visit St. Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks to God for their good fortune. They have taken a gold guinea as an offering. But there was no collection plate at the door and no ‘venerable elder, lending sanctity to his office by reason of his age’ but a young man ‘much more like a writer’s whipper-snapper-clerk’ who offers him change for his guinea! When the minister and his wife enter St. Paul’s, they hear the organ playing  and immediately describ...

  2 November 2025 In 2009, Mary-Catherine and I visited Oxford to attend a concert where our younger son was performing. We visited the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. It was very moving to see John Henry Newman’s pulpit which had been installed in the church the year before his induction. When he climbed these pulpit steps to preach to a packed church, I don’t suppose that Church of England vicar ever thought he would become a cardinal, let alone a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Many followed him up these pulpit steps without receiving such honours. Among them was one of his twentieth century successors. He exercised a very effective ministry. In 1939, he invited a group of German Lutheran refugees to worship in St. Mary the Virgin. Some of them were of Jewish origin fleeing from Nazi persecution. It was an act of generosity and grace, a ministry of reconciliation and healing. It has been a lasting ministry for the Lutherans were still worshipping there. In ...