Novelty in continuity

According to Benedict XVI, Vatican II was a fundamental yes to a modern age. But does the Pope see it as a rupture with the past? A leading authority on the council suggests the Pope’s interpretation is a subtle one, pitching him against the Lefebvrists...

Sorry? They haven’t a clue

Much public fury has been directed at the bankers, who are seen as largely to blame for our financial woes. Given the suffering they have caused, many desire to see them shamed. But is stigma the appropriate Christian response?...

Brown is the new black – and white

The number of mixed-race children is increasing rapidly in the UK, and clear-cut racial groups could disappear. America has led the way, its status as a ‘brown nation’ confirmed by Obama’s election. But will it mean new confidence or conflict caused by fundamentalism?...

Long road to unity

As Christianity grows ever more diverse, is unity an absurd hope – or even desirable? A recent international conference in Durham confirmed that although progress is slow, a new way of ‘doing’ ecumenism is starting to bear fruit...

Can the Irish Church survive?

Fewer than half of its flock go to Mass on Sundays, compared with 95 per cent 30 years ago. Its moral authority has taken a battering and its coffers are depleted. Now the Church in Ireland faces two further damaging reports on its failure to control clerical sexual abuse...

Bobby’s girl

The famous Irish American dynasty is known for its public clashes with the Church as much as for its private piety. Now one of its daughters, Kerry Kennedy, talks to David Gibson about her journey from belief to alienation to a new embrace of Catholicism...

Sacred aid to faith

The wording of this prayer, and in particular its indication of the relationship between faith and the Eucharist, is marked by the debates on transubstantiation during the Reformation. As Daniel McCarthy argues, it shows the means by which true faith is nourished...

What the world can teach us

A whole range of emotions are inspired in the secular world – say in sport and shopping – that faith fails to take advantage of. Yet it is arguable that the joys and sorrows, the desires and longings, that we are familiar with in this sphere should be equally a part of our spiritual life in the Church...

On the edge

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