| Ill wind of greed Free In the Middle Ages, the financial crisis that has devastated Wall Street would no doubt have been likened to the wrath of God that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. One of America's biggest banks, Lehman Brothers, has filed for bankruptcy, throwing ... | Bulldog barks too loudly |
|
Features
Poland’s pointless trialJonathan LuxmooreFormer communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski is on trial over his imposition of martial law almost three decades ago. Many Poles agree politicians should face such a reckoning for that dark period in history, but others point out that the complexities of the era are only now coming to light...
|  Seeking the God who seeks usPope Benedict XVIAs part of his visit to Paris and Lourdes, the Pope spoke last Friday at the French capital’s Collège des Bernardins, a former monastery, to an audience of 700 representing the ‘world of culture’. He explored what lessons contemporary Europe can learn from the legacy of monasticism... |
Poetry and silence requiredBarbara Mary HopperThe training of readers at Mass takes time. The initial enthusiasm is important, but people also need to be encouraged to ponder the passages prayerfully beforehand, to use various skills to bring the readings alive, and to understand the ‘choreography’ of their moment in the celebration...
|  A shrine that became theirsAngela GrahamResidents on a bleak housing estate in South Wales have begun to take an interest in the Marian shrine on their doorstep. As a result Our Lady of Penrhys is playing a key role in the regeneration of the area once thought by many to be out of sight and out of mind... |
 Reveille for slumbering CatholicsRobert MickensThe French saw two sides of Pope Benedict last week: the profound theologian who delivered a testing lecture in Paris and the warm pastor ministering to the sick and disabled in Lourdes. It was his ninth foreign journey and his first time in France as Pope... | Alternative healingDaniel O’LearyNew Age spirituality has been condemned by a variety of voices in the Church, but it would be wrong to reject its enthusiasts out of hand. Their spiritual longing, like that of many Christians, is to try their best to find the still centre at the universal heart of love...
|
In love and dutyDaniel McCarthyAfter petitioning that the Lord receive our gifts, writes Daniel McCarthy, the prayer for this Sunday, composed no later than the sixth century, asks that these gifts, through the mysteries of heaven, might obtain for us the saving realities the prayer itself proclaims...
|  Why greed will always come before a fallChris BlackhurstNot since the Wall Street Crash of 80 years ago has the financial system been so damaged by a shakeout that has led once mighty institutions to topple. But the aftermath will require more than a rethink by banks as to how they do business... |
|
|
|
Columnists
 Tim Hames‘Even if Tony Blair … were still in Downing Street, Labour’s poll ratings would be dire’  Ann Wroe‘I think the insects are there to point the stillness, as they stilled me in my picking’
|
Books and arts
Why race is not the problem Free
Strange Fruit
Kenan Malik
Just before starting on Strange Fruit, the Indian-born British writer Kenan Malik's deconstruction of race, I finished quite a different book. It was John Buchan's Prester ... |
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
