It is almost too easy to hold American gun law responsible for American gun crime. The ready availability of firearms is undoubtedly one of the reasons why a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed more than 30 university members - fellow students and academic staff - before turning his weapon on himself. But it also has to be noted that the pro-gun lobby is saying that if more students carried guns, he could have been stopped sooner. Indeed, self-protection is the most common reason why Americans buy guns in the first place.

Those who seek tighter control of guns, and not just in Virginia, which is notoriously lax in these matters, are asserting that certain liberties of the citizen have to be curtailed by Government for the sake of the common good. In contrast, the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms" arose from the perception that British colonial power had become a threat to individual freedom, which only an armed citizenry could effectively hold at bay. Thus the debate about gun control touches something very deep in the American psyche. It is a generalisation, but one bearing much truth, that Americans have never trusted their own government, whether colonial, federal or state, and they do not trust each other.

The national frame of values encourages an individualism, even atomisation, within American society that may relate to the Puritan origins of the first colonial settlements. Some American commentators speak of a streak of paranoia in the national personality, and a tendency to suspect conspiracies in high places. Guns are no less prevalent in the hands of ordinary people in peace-loving Canada and law-abiding Switzerland, but gun crime is low in both places. But neither the Swiss nor the Canadians have a national culture that emphasises the sense of individual competitiveness, of "each against the whole", that characterises America, nor a film industry that glamorises gun violence.

Although this competitiveness may be the source ...

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 ...

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, ...