Favoured sons ... and daughters

With more bishops than any other order in the Church, and a "family" of 400,000 priests, Religious and lay helpers, the Salesians, whose twenty-sixth General Chapter opens in Rome on Monday, are also being promoted to key posts at the Vatican...

Do I know you?

Despite fewer people logging on to web-based social networking sites this year than last, they continue to attract millions. But virtual acquaintance is no substitute for human friendship...

A destabilising independence

Since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February, Serbs have staged violent demonstrations against the US and against many EU countries that supported the move. It is feared that recognition of Kosovo has set a dangerous precedent, with consequences far beyond its borders...

Parting of the ways, Jewish-style

In the second of our series on religious law - following the Archbishop of Canterbury's controversial lecture on sharia which highlighted the issue of how religious and civil laws operate side by side - we look at how divorce is dealt with in Judaism...

In search of God

The warmth of the welcome given by the father to the Prodigal Son offers profound hope to us all. In his meditation for the fourth Sunday of Lent, the late Cardinal Basil Hume writes about our search for God, the stumbling blocks we encounter and how these are overcome...

Balm for the world

The prayer for Laetare Sunday prefigures the rejoicing that all those can anticipate who are preparing to be baptised or received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. The gift of Christ's body and blood, writes Daniel McCarthy, is the 'immortal remedy'...

To dismiss or not dismiss

Lent offers an opportunity for radical initiatives, and the rites associated with the reception into the Church of catechumens offer ways of facilitating such initiatives that are too often ignored...

You're only cheating yourself

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