Adding spice to the American mix

Benedict XVI knows that the Church in America faces an entirely different set of challenges from the Church in Europe, and his addresses during his visit will take account of that. Here one of the leading US commentators highlights the key issues...

The state we are in

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict spoke of three signs of the times: globalisation, secularism and a search for spirituality outside institutional religion. As he visits the United States and addresses the United Nations, we examine these ‘signs’. Here, the president of Magdalene College, Cambridge, asks how useful the concept of secularism is for understanding the contemporary world...

From man’s man to free man

A visit to a prison revealed the damage that has been done to so many young men, some serving jail sentences, but most imprisoned in other ways. Yet the painful path to true liberation, through death to life, was also pointed out...

Less protection for the human

Amnesty International has veered from its traditional campaigning concern for prisoners of conscience. Its support for abortion in certain circumstances was confirmed at last week’s AGM. Some members have resigned, but others are still working from within to reverse this change of direction...

Love in the time of poverty

More used to trying to bring God to people, a missionary on a undercover quest to reconnect with the poorest and most deprived in Britain found instead that, in the grubbiest part of town, God was offered selflessly and unselfconsciously back to him...

Benedict’s papacy comes of age

Three days after his eighty-first birthday, today marks the end of the third year since the papal election of Benedict XVI. The year was marked by the publication of his encyclical on hope. But his bold liturgical changes have caused the most controversy...

A holy transaction

The fact that our gifts are part of an exchange raises the question of what kind of response is required from us to God’s gift of the Word. Daniel McCarthy explains what lies behind the invitation to divine-human commerce...

At your service

The way that power is exercised in the Church should be neither democratic nor autocratic. The appropriate structure takes account of the fact that church members are a communion of slaves, a true fellowship ...

A fair compliment

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