At the time when Tony Blair's Cabinet is said to be split over whether to renew Britain's nuclear armoury, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has joined its Scottish brethren in calling for Britain to end its reliance on these devastating weapons. Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth explained on BBC Radio 4 that the Catholic bishops based their opposition on the fact that such weapons could never be used without inflicting massive and grossly disproportionate civilian casualties. That has always been a powerful argument, though defenders of nuclear weapons argue that they exist not to be used but to deter others from using their own weapons against us, and that that mitigates or even refutes the basic objection. When these issues were last topical, the moral debate about whether it was always wrong to possess something that it was wrong to use tended to end in stalemate. And if the missiles were aimed only at Warsaw Pact non-civilian targets, did that alter the moral case? The bishops' statement would have been more persuasive had it acknowledged the strength of contrary arguments. 

The Church's position against nuclear weapons has strengthened under the present Pope. The bishops quote Pope Benedict's World Day of Peace message earlier this year in which he calls for progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament, and they have been inspired to follow his lead. What is more, they have judged that they should make known their views now when a decision needs to be made on whether to renew or replace Trident, although they do not refer to it by name.

They rightly suggest that if the United Kingdom takes the first step and decommissions its nuclear weapons, other nuclear powers might follow their lead. Implicit, though not stated, is the recognition that the world has changed since the end of the Cold War. Any nuclear threat to Britain no longer comes from the defunct Warsaw Pact nor from post-Communist Russia, but from a dangerous ...

Bishops of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church meeting together from time to time, as they did in Leeds this week, seems such an obvious idea that it is surprising it has not happened before. This coming together of the bishops of England may be a recognition that theological convergence between the two Churches has gone as far as it can - indeed, now faces new difficulties - and that "doing ecumenism" ...

Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's former press secretary, once famously said: "We don't do God," expressing a common view that religion and politics do not mix. Certainly today, Britain often seems a markedly secular country. Strident voices can regularly be heard denouncing religion.

But according to research published this week by the newly established religious think tank, Theos, the ...

To the delight of environmentalists, global warming has been catapulted to the top of the domestic political agenda by the publication of the massive and authoritative Stern Report. Now Al Gore, no less, has been assigned to take the report's message to America, where refusal to take the threat of climate change seriously is the single most important reason the world has so far failed to come to grips with the ...

The Government has found itself with a scrap on its hands it clearly never bargained for, as the Catholic Church flexes its political muscles to thwart a plan rightly seen as an attack on the very principle of Catholic schools. The Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, has written to every head teacher pointing out the importance of contacting local MPs to show how widespread is the consternation in the Catholic ...