The Catholic community in Britain is entering a difficult period in its relations with wider society. The background cultural climate is becoming less friendly - Matthew Arnold's "long withdrawing roar" of the sea of faith seems to have been replaced by a surging incoming tide of antagonistic secularism, at least among some decision makers and commentators. For them "faith" signifies either the fundamentalist right wing in America or Muslim jihadists, with little in between.

In the foreground, two issues are prominent. Catholic childcare agencies may be forced to withdraw from handling adoptions because anti-discrimination legislation would force them to treat homosexual couples on the same basis as heterosexuals. And Catholic schools may be obliged to offer a quarter of their places to non-Catholics. At the moment the proposal applies only to new schools, but a strong political lobby would like to see that extended to existing schools as well - a modification that could drive a coach and horses through the whole system.

The Government has contradictory aims. It has conceded the case to allow Muslim schools in the state sector alongside Catholic, Church of England and Jewish schools, but is anxious to avoid them becoming agents of cultural separation. Hence the idea of obliging them to offer a quarter of their places to non-Muslims - despite the fact that there is no evidence of any demand from non-Muslim parents for that privilege. In order for that not to be seen to be discriminatory, however, the same rule would have to apply to other faith schools in the state sector. This is a thoroughly flawed approach.

The Church of England, the largest stakeholder in this area, is more comfortable with that idea than the Catholic Church, which has roughly 10 per cent of the whole. In many existing Catholic schools a 25 per cent non-Catholic quota would present few difficulties apart from those of identity - whether the children of lapsed Catholics should ...

Hostility and rejection based on religion are part of the history of the Catholic community in Great Britain. It was in living memory, for instance, that nuns in the streets of Britain could expect to be insulted, jostled or even stoned. There is therefore a strong strand of sympathy among Catholics for Muslims experiencing something similar today, particularly in relation to the current controversy over Muslim women ...

The BBC Panorama programme has accused Pope Benedict XVI of enforcing a policy of secrecy over priests facing allegations of child sex abuse when he was a high Vatican official (see News from Britain and Ireland, page 36). The declared intention was to prevent victims and the church authorities reporting such cases to the police. In this case, consistent with Panorama's previous approach to investigative journalism, ...

Unlike his recent Regensburg speech with its controversial quotations about Islam, Pope Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, published earlier this year, met with universal acclaim. Its far-reaching analysis examined not only the more spiritual aspects of our lives, but also our responsibilities in the public sphere, emphasising that social justice should be a central concern of politics ...

For those privileged to have experienced education in a Western-model university, Pope Benedict's speech at Regensburg last week was a template of an academic lecture: intellectually challenging, provocative, clarifying some issues while also raising new questions. But in the ever-shrinking twenty-first century global village, such discourse, particularly by a world leader, can never stand in isolation ...