Though he is concerned to preserve Catholicism's unity and identity, the fundamental characteristic of Pope Benedict's papacy so far has been his tone of encouragement rather than of disapproval. Explaining in an interview why during his visit there he had not joined the Spanish bishops' denunciation of proposals to recognise gay relationships, he replied: "Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions: it's a positive option. It's very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We've heard so much about what is not allowed that now it's time to say: we have a positive idea to offer." This is surely an idea whose time has come.

It is now clear that the man elected Pope in the spring of 2005 was neither a Rottweiler nor a caretaker, but his own man. Like many intellectuals he sometimes fails to see the banana skin just in front of him, as when he seemed to link Islam with violence in his address at Regensburg last year. But his compensating gestures during his visit to Turkey, including saying prayers in the main mosque in Istanbul, signalled tolerance and broad-mindedness in interfaith matters (although concerns have been expressed about relations with Jews, as Edward Kessler discusses on page 8).

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger was known to have opposed the interfaith event at Assisi in 1986. On its twentieth anniversary last year, however, Benedict called it "prophetic". A similar shift was evident in his one encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, which dealt movingly and creatively with the theme of erotic love without dwelling on any of the traditional Catholic prohibitions concerning sexuality that might have been expected.

Given that he is about to celebrate his eightieth birthday, and given that one of the criticisms of the elderly is their reluctance to reconsider settled opinions, he is evidently younger ...

Easter is one of two moments in the year when church congregations experience a surge. The Christmas Day surge is easier to understand, given that it has been the focus of the retail industry for weeks beforehand. Easter remains essentially a religious festival and its congregations may contain a greater proportion of people who are enquirers, either asking themselves whether the time has come to return to the faith ...

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor used his erudite Corbishley Lecture this week to erect a breakwater against the incoming tide of aggressive secularism and atheism. His purpose was both to start a debate, he said, and to sound an alarm against the "new intolerance" that disputes the presence of religion in the public sphere. A new breed of secularists, increasingly visible in the media and in politics, ...

For weeks the Conservatives have subjected Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and likely next Prime Minister, to hard political pounding. An accompanying chorus of muttering has been heard on the Labour back benches, looking forward with dread rather than hope to his assuming the leadership of party and country in a few weeks' time. So far the desire of those MPs for a convincing rival candidate has failed ...

The Vatican's denunciation of certain works by the Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino will be widely seen as a renewal of its campaign against liberation theology. He is one of its leading exponents. Nevertheless, the terms of the latest judgement differ significantly from previous actions against this theology in two respects. First, the grounds of disapproval, likely to seem somewhat arcane to secular commentators, ...