The relationship between Poland and Great Britain has historically been a warm one. This tone has continued following the arrival of a large number of Polish immigrants since the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. Community tensions have been minimal, and the British have put on a good display of hospitality to strangers. But to maintain that goodwill, it will be necessary to handle with great diplomatic skill what looks like the beginning of a tug-of-war over their allegiance, between the leadership of the Catholic Church in Poland and of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor warned in an interview with a Polish news agency before Christmas that there was a danger that Polish immigrants, wanting to pray in their own language with their own priests and community activities, were creating a separate Church and thus were failing to integrate into the larger community. Judging by reported remarks of his opposite number in Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, some kind of Polish "Church within a Church" was precisely what the Catholic bishops of Poland wanted.

The situation is complicated by the existence of a long-established Polish Mission, set up with the agreement of the bishops of England and Wales, with 100 priests and twice as many congregations, including some churches devoted exclusively to the Polish community. Since 1948, following a deal done with Cardinal Bernard Griffin, they have been answerable to the Polish bishops, an ecclesiological anomaly that was perhaps acceptable when the greater part of the Polish community consisted of involuntary exiles, members of the brave Polish forces who were stranded in Britain after the Second World War. Barred from their homeland by Yalta, their hearts never left Poland: they were "Poland abroad", as their compatriot Pope John Paul II told them when he visited England in 1982.

This exceptional approach is less appropriate today, and needs rethinking. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor ...

Christmas' growing commercialisation could be likened to the demolition of Westminster Abbey to be replaced by a car park. No doubt that prime piece of land could make someone a fortune. But no one would seriously suggest that it should be done. The abandonment of the spiritual dimension of Christmas, leaving only pleasure and profit as the point of the midwinter festivities, would leave an even greater hole in ...

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 ...

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 ...