Although well aware that Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg favoured celibacy being made optional in the Catholic Church, the bishops of Germany recently elected him as their president in succession to Cardinal Karl Lehmann. That is not the only recent straw in this particular wind. The organisation representing priests in Brazil - the country with the greatest shortage of priests - has just launched a petition calling for a similar change. And much alarm is reported from Ireland at news that vocations to the priesthood have collapsed to the point where numbers are likely to fall by two-thirds in 20 years. It would not be difficult to extend the list of countries with a vocations crisis almost indefinitely, Great Britain included. Yet Pope Benedict XVI has said that the issue is not even open for discussion.

The Vatican is well insulated against pressure from below in the Church, which can be a strength as well as a weakness. Change in the Church is more often driven by theology and doctrine than by social factors, though no theologian would claim to be able to ignore entirely what is happening outside his window. The forced amalgamation of parishes because of a shortage of priests is not just a practical matter, if as a result a growing number of Catholics are denied access to the sacraments. And if celibacy has an enduring value in the life of the Church, as Popes and cardinals often proclaim, they have clearly failed to persuade a sufficient number of potential candidates for the priesthood of the importance of this theological insight (which is not to deny its truth.) Celibacy instead appears as a heavy price to be paid - or, increasingly, not - rather than a joyous symbol of the Kingdom of God. That is failure not just of communication but of theology and of leadership.

There are two ways to go. Leaders of the Catholic Church must either renew the theology of celibacy so that it becomes convincing again, or they have to find some other solution. Toughening the ...

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 (Marx), the arrival of a better educated or a more equal society would eliminate the space it occupied. Those thinkers are still waiting. Indeed, the delay has sparked ...

A week is a long time in an archiepiscopacy, as Dr Rowan Williams found last week. First, a learned lecture, coupled with a radio interview. Then vitriol poured upon vitriol through newspaper headlines. There were 17,000 emails of complaint to the BBC and 30,000 to one newspaper alone, expressing outrage at the Archbishop of Canterbury's thoughts on Islam and sharia law. But, day by day, a more considered response ...

The German theologian, Johannes Baptist Metz, once posed the rhetorical question: was it any longer possible to pray "with one's back turned to Auschwitz"? He felt that the immensity of suffering and evil inflicted on the Jews in the Holocaust, for which Christianity itself had to accept some responsibility, had implications for almost every detail of Christian theology and worship. It is instructive ...

There is recognisably such a thing as Catholic fundamentalism. It might be defined, by reference to Protestant and Islamic parallels, as believing in a strict and literal interpretation of basic texts and leaving no room for development. When the new head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, told Catholic journalists recently that it was not the role of the Catholic press ...