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Astonishing. Nine Christians killed at a church service in Jordan. Attackers now arrested. Yesterday @BBCNews did not update about additional deaths AND today stay silent as three are arrested. Why don't they want to talk about it? Imagine the coverage if this was in Israel!

The Catholic Church could effectively disappear from England. And that would not contradict a single promise made by Jesus Christ. That is the extraordinary warning at the heart of a new pastoral letter written by Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth in 2022, and it deserves far more attention than it has received. Christ promised that His Church would endure until the end of time. He never promised that the Faith would survive in any particular country. North Africa, once the flourishing Christian civilisation of St Augustine and St Cyprian, provides a sobering historical warning. The Church is indefectible. Catholicism in England is not. The statistics Egan cited were deeply troubling: for every person becoming Catholic, six leave. But what really interests me is his diagnosis. He does not simply blame secularisation or propose another programme of institutional restructuring. He recognises that the Church's own failure to communicate the supernatural reality of the Faith lies at the heart of the problem. He speaks explicitly about the necessity of beauty and solemnity in the liturgy, serious formation, prayer, Confession, Eucharistic adoration and personal conversion. His understanding of evangelisation is refreshingly unambiguous: its immediate purpose is the conversion of souls and its ultimate purpose the transformation of culture through the Gospel. Perhaps his most important observation is this: "We will not be saved by structures." This deserves serious reflection throughout the Church in England and Wales. We can amalgamate parishes, reorganise dioceses, rationalise resources and produce endless pastoral strategies, but none of these things will restore the Faith unless Catholics themselves recover a profound understanding of what they believe, why they believe it, and what Christ demands of them. I would add one further consideration. Genuine renewal also requires the courageous, unambiguous transmission of the entirety of Catholic doctrine, including those teachings which our increasingly secular culture finds most difficult to accept. We cannot evangelise effectively by obscuring the very truths we are commissioned to proclaim. Four years on, I would be interested to know what fruit Bishop Egan's programme has borne. Have we witnessed renewed faith, more conversions, deeper sacramental life and stronger Catholic families, or merely a more efficient management of decline? Because ultimately, the question facing the Church in England is not simply how many churches we can afford to keep open. It is whether we are still forming Catholics who understand that the salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church.