One of the great unfulfilled promises of the Second Vatican Council was that a new encounter with Scripture would greatly enrich the life of the Church. That was what the bishops clearly hoped for, and what their decree Dei Verbum actually said. Scripture was to return to its role at the very heart of the Catholic faith. As the Catholic Church's neglect of Scripture was one of the complaints made by the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, this was expected to have profound ecumenical implications, too. The failure of these hopes to be realised is the central theme of the current international synod of bishops in Rome, and the most surprising thing about this is that the issue hasn't been addressed sooner.

If Catholic attitudes to the Bible are still pre-conciliar, not the least of the reasons is a failure of preaching. The Second Vatican Council rightly insisted that preaching was a crucial part of the Ministry of the Word at Mass, otherwise the bare reading aloud of the words on the page would be largely ineffective. They needed explanation and interpretation, not so that the Church could impose its "official" view of what they meant but because Scripture is often confusing and enigmatic in content. The three Scriptural readings at Sunday Mass have been selected because they have some inner coherence, but what that is exactly is rarely straightforward. Indeed, the entire lectionary, which dictates what is to be read when, is due for an overhaul. The issue of the relevance of the Old Testament to the New can be a minefield in itself, given that any reference to the prophetic role of the former must not be allowed to imply that the religion of the Old Testament has been rendered redundant by the New. That road, as the Church has come painfully to realise, can lead to anti-Semitism.

It is difficult, also, to strike the right balance between the historical and allegorical elements in Scripture. It is as necessary to eschew radical reductionism, for instance ...

What had seemed like a mere crisis in the banking system turned this week into something close to a calamity. The emergency rescue plan announced by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling would have been close to unimaginable a matter of weeks ago. While it has long been the ambition of the Left in the Labour Party to nationalise the banks, not even Tony Benn could have imagined that it might be partly achieved by these ...

When the Cistercian monk and author Thomas Merton first visited the monastery that was to become his home, the Abbey of Gethsemani, he is said to have exclaimed that he had discovered the only real city in America. It was a comment that conveyed how well a place functions under the rule of St Benedict, with its emphasis on service, order, hospitality and communal life.

It has become a commonplace among some ...

The Churches in Britain have a long and distinguished record of commenting authoritatively on issues of economics and social justice, a tradition embracing the Anglican "Faith in the City" report in 1985, the Catholic statement "The Common Good" a decade later, and the more recent ecumenical document of 2005, "Prosperity with a Purpose".

It is far too soon to expect similarly weighty ...

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 thousands out of work (including up to 5,000 at its London subsidiaries) and threatening a dangerous chain reaction throughout the global financial system. As in the story ...