| Banks for the common good Free There are apologies, such as "we are sorry for the late running of your train" from railway public-address systems, that are as obviously pre-recorded as they are insincere. There are apologies along the lines of "we are sorry if we have offended you", ... | True ecumenical friends |
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Features
Voyage from faithNick SpencerThe idea that Charles Darwin’s discoveries about natural selection destroyed his Christian faith is a myth. Rather, what made the great naturalist – born 200 years ago this week – agnostic, was the inability of his own lukewarm version of Christianity to deal with acute personal suffering...
| Don’t stifle the flamePatrick KilgarriffSome Catholic schools want to make baptism within a year of a child’s birth a condition of entry, while some churches also insist on early initiation ceremonies, citing canon law. But do such rules take into account people’s complicated lives – or the way in which faith sometimes emerges?...
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Already inside the tentRobert MickensRome’s demand that all SSPX members recognise Vatican II and the Magisterium of all the Popes from John XXIII to Benedict XVI could turn out to be little more than window dressing if the experience of other traditionalist groups already under papal patronage is anything to go by...
| Justice blind – but dumbConor GeartyThe recent refusal by the High Court of the request by Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed for evidence relating to his alleged torture highlights the powerlessness judges feel when faced with politicians’ demands for closed courts in the name of ‘national security’...
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 Sorry seems to be the hardest wordJane ThynneIn the current ‘shame culture’ that appears to have overtaken the BBC, executives must make sure that there is not one rule for gaffe-prone superstars, such as Jonathan Ross and Jeremy Clarkson, and one for lesser mortals, such as Carol Thatcher... | Is a country churchyard worth a Mass?Ted HarrisonThis week Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor used his speech at the Church of England Synod to urge Anglicans and Catholics to work together. But a fierce argument in the heart of a Kent village reveals that divisions of the English Reformation can still lie deep...
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 Now it’s up to themEugene J. FisherA former head of relations with Jews for the United States bishops’ conference outlines the steps he believes the Society of St Pius X must take before the Lefebvrist group as a whole can be admitted back into full communion with the Church... | Daily bread from HeavenDaniel McCarthyOur ordinary desires and familiar hunger can guide us on the heavenly path, if these are formed and informed by the body and blood of Christ, explains Daniel McCarthy. This prayer shows how, in his presence, we come to want the very things that we truly need...
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Columnists
 Clifford Longley‘No longer can society police itself … but it must turn to the power of the State’  Laurence Freeman‘The only moment of life that fully matches the drama of birth had come to pass’
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Books and arts
Barnacles of the world unite Free
Darwin’s Island: the Galapagos in the garden of England
Steve Jones
Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London, is by his own admission more atheistic than Richard Dawkins. He told me not so long ago that, on a scale of one ... |
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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 ...
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