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Chris BainFloods in Bihar. Hurricanes in Haiti. Food shortages in Zimbabwe. Humanitarian crises often strike at the same time. So how do aid agencies deal with so many demands on their finite resources and funds? The director of Cafod gives an insight into the tough choices that have to be made Free
From the editor’s desk
| 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 |
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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...
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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... |
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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’
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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 ...
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Banishing O'Brien answers some questions, raises others
Abigail Frymann
So Rome has ordered Cardinal Keith O'Brien to leave Scotland, three months after it was ... Does Cardinal O’Brien deserve banishment or pardon? He at least owes us an explanation
Elena Curti, Deputy Editor
The return of Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien to Scotland has for many Catholics rubbed salt ... Don’t stop there, Justine Greening, the current model of aid is problematic
Bishop Kevin Dowling, guest contributor
Differing statements have appeared in the media over the past week about the decision by ...
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