Catholic Ireland has suffered a series of moral earthquakes that have shaken it to its foundations. The latest shock arises from the publication of the Ryan Commission Report into the industrial school system that used to be run by religious orders, where appalling cruelty was endemic and institutionalised. Other reports are expected this summer into sexual abuse committed by priests and the efforts by church authorities to cover it up. Although the initiative for these investigations has come from politicians, the present generation of Irish Catholics, leaders and laity, is showing the first signs of a willingness to face up to what went wrong. Not all of them, of course - some of the religious orders implicated by Ryan have displayed a shameful reluctance to admit their full responsibility. But the hierarchy is at last starting to function as it should have done all along, not to protect the Church's interests but to seek out the truth in the name of justice. These are the first green shoots of renewal.

It is clear the problem was not just "a few bad apples" or even a whole barrel of them, but the arrogance of an almighty Church too powerful for its own good. It is useless to blame the state or society for allowing it to happen. The blame lies within the Church itself. The power and the glory that were so badly misused had a theological, even ideo­logic­al, basis. This told the Church that it was "a true and perfect society" (in the words of Pius IX): whatever it did was right, and whatever might contradict that impression had to be suppressed. Only "bad Catholics" would dare whisper it. If the Church has a future in Ireland it will be because it now has the courage to say such things to itself out loud, and ­repudiate the ­habitual abuse of power that lay behind all the other horrors.
There is another Catholicism, which was on display in Westminster Cathedral last week at the installation of Archbishop Vincent Nichols. It can be glimpsed in the newly ...

There was an unexpected echo of President Barack Obama at the heart of Archbishop Vincent Nichols' installation sermon at Westminster Cathedral. Spelling out what he means by calling for "respectful" dialogue in modern society, the archbishop declares: "Let us be a society in which we genuinely listen to each other, in which sincere disagreement is not made out to be insult or harassment, in which reasoned principles ...

Pope Benedict's visit to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank appears to have achieved all that he set out to achieve as a pilgrim and man of peace. He applied gentle but effective pressure on Israel's coalition Government and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to wander too far from the road map defining the "two-state" peace process, which in the view of the Vatican, Washington and most of the rest of the world, ...

As Pope Benedict flies to the Holy Land, an unholy row has broken out over allegations that Israeli forces deliberately or recklessly fired on United Nations personnel and property in Gaza during January's military action against Hamas, killing staff and civilians sheltering there. The terms of this quarrel are wearily familiar. As has happened before, most notably during action against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, ...