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Isabel de BertodanoIn the first of a series looking at how religious law works alongside civil law, following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks about Islamic sharia we look at Catholics’ experience of marriage, divorce and annulment in the United Kingdom today Free
From the editor’s desk
| I believe; therefore I survive Free Common to most progressive thinkers of the twentieth century was the conviction that human enlightenment would sooner or later banish religious dogma. If religion was merely irrational superstition (Voltaire) or a way to manipulate power relationships ... | Suicide and the young |
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Features
Castro and the Catholics Free Clare DixonThe man who has led Cuba since 1949, and who was widely expected to remain in office until he died, is stepping down from the presidency. The relationship of Fidel Castro with the Church was more complicated than might be expected in such a ‘devout’ Communist...
|  Thirst for God’s justiceCardinal Basil Hume Christ offers the Samaritan woman he meets at the well a kind of water that will satisfy thirst for ever. In his meditation for the third Sunday of Lent, the late Cardinal Basil Hume addresses the transformative power of revelation and its effect on human consciousness and solidarity... |
 Home truths from York’s plain speakerVictoria Combe Installed to the sound of African drums as the ninety-seventh Archbishop of York two years ago, John Sentamu tells Victoria Combe of his fasting for peace, public cutting-up of his clerical collar, and his defence of the ‘sharia’ views of Rowan Williams... | Forgiven and so forgivingDaniel McCarthy The prayer for the Third Sunday in Lent is based on the understanding that we need to be helped to see the beam in our own eye before we attend to the faults of others. As Daniel McCarthy explains, God’s enabling of forgiveness is essential for our spiritual progress...
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The joy of giving ourselvesTimothy RadcliffeThe Church’s teaching on sexuality is based on natural law, but the former Master of the Dominicans argues that a Christian vision of sexuality can also embrace another kind of sexual ethic derived from Jesus’ gift of himself at the Last Supper...
| How activists muddy Sudanese watersJulie FlintThe intervention of film director Steven Spielberg has put the crisis in Darfur back on the front pages. But uproar over China’s involvement with the government in Khartoum has clouded the more complex story of what is happening in the region...
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A Church that looks both waysEdward KesslerThe second of two articles on the revised Tridentine Rite Good Friday prayer points out that, for some, it now seems that Catholics hold two contradictory positions on relations with the Jews...
|  The Lord providesDominic Prince Is someone watching over the naval chaplain turned point-to-point jockey who has just won his first race at 50-1? Might be worth watching his next race, says Dominic Prince... |
In from the coldSheila KeefeA systematic programme for bringing those who have drifted from the Church back ‘home’ to the Sacraments can bear much fruit – provided it is grounded in prayer...
| What’s it to be?Daniel O’LearyMagnanimous or pusillanimous, the right option seems self-evident. But in life’s moments of great decision the way of choice is rarely so easy or obvious...
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Columnists
 Tim Hames‘Russia is not having an election but a coronation with mass public participation’  Peter Stanford‘We never give the elderly what they need most: somebody to listen to them’
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Books and arts
Heaven and middle earth Free
Inklings of Heaven: C.S. Lewis and Eschatology
Sean Connolly
I am always mildly apprehensive of books purporting to explain the metaphysical theories behind literary texts. There is a danger in trying to make explicit what underpins, or informs, ... |
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Is the Church too slow in recognising that academies are the future for Catholic schools?
Christopher Lamb
According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ... Goodwin the scapegoat
Elena Curti
There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ... The pain of being a coeliac Catholic
Sr M, guest contributor
"Whoever comes to me, I shall not turn (him) her away" (John 6:37). Many readers will recognise ...
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