The Government Chief Whip, Geoff Hoon, has been asked by Catholic Labour MPs to extend the categories under which they are allowed a "conscience" vote to include various issues raised in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. They will automatically be excused the duty to obey a whip - a government instruction to vote a certain way - when the House of Commons debates amendments to the bill relating directly to abortion. They want the same freedom to be extended to clauses that would allow lesbian couples to conceive a child by in vitro fertilisation, including one that would remove the requirement to identify a father for such a child. They have told Mr Hoon that these are also issues of conscience for Catholics. They are right.

The role of conscience in politics was discussed at a recent meeting some Catholic MPs attended at Archbishop's House, Westminster, when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor spoke of the need for better liaison between Catholic parliamentarians and church leaders in future. Significantly, he told them that he did not want to interfere with their freedom to exercise their own judgement, even on issues where the Church's leadership had taken a definite line. Bodies hostile to church involvement in politics, such as the National Secular Society, have interpreted this meeting as sinister.

This assumes, however, that the Catholic Church claims to operate a whip of its own, a party line on certain ethical issues which Catholic MPs are obliged to obey. The cardinal was at pains to reject that impression, but the fear is not groundless. In the last United States presidential election certain bishops tried to put pressure on candidates by threatening to withhold Holy Communion from them unless they vowed to oppose the legalisation of abortion brought about by the Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court in 1973. And the Vatican's own statements on the duties of Catholic politicians have left little room for individual judgement. ...

Pope Benedict XVI's lucid and profound encyclical Spe Salvi - "Saving Hope" - failed to gain much notice in the secular media but deserves serious attention in the Church, both for what it says and for what it signals. Of the three theological virtues, so called because they are impossible without divine grace, hope is the least understood and therefore the most neglected. Under the papal microscope, ...

The stakes could hardly be higher, but so are the odds. The international peace conference convened by President George Bush in Annapolis in the United States has brought together more than 40 states and international agencies in the search for the most elusive peace deal of all, one between the state of Israel and its hostile neighbours. The burden of the search for peace lies mainly on the shoulders of the Palestinian ...

From time to time an idea comes along that captures the mood of the moment. Eight years ago a new organisation, Fathers Direct, did just that. Its main aim was to provide information on fatherhood through training and advice, but its very existence reflected the growing belief that fathers should play as vital a role in the raising of children as mothers do. Indeed, much of Fathers Direct's focus has been on helping ...