Benedict XVI's new social encyclical will take an hon­oured place in the series of such documents dating back to Rerum Novarum in 1891. Caritas in Veritate will be instantly scanned for what it has to say about contemporary concerns, such as the credit crunch, global warming, mass migration and unemployment. But its real if less newsworthy significance is in its development of the tradition. Each social encyclical subtly adjusts positions taken by previous popes, and explores in greater depth points only touched upon before. Thus the most recent in the series, John Paul II's Centesimus Annus of 1991, gave the Catholic Church's official though qualified blessing to what it called the "business economy", while asserting that free-market wealth creation had to be conducted subject to the requirements of the common good.

Caritas in Veritate is a lot more cautious. Vatican spokesmen have had to deny that it is anti-capitalist, but it is certainly true it is critical of so-called "mainstream" economics and its flawed anthropological model of "economic man" driven by rational self-interest. Indeed, it gives philosophical depth to a widespread perception that the single-minded pursuit of profit has led the world economic system down a catastrophic blind alley. It advocates "gift" and "fraternity" as two ideas a more humane economy ought to incorporate, suggesting that the so-called voluntary sector should loom much larger than it has. There is plenty for governments - and local bishops' conferences - to ponder in the Pope's advocacy of a "civil market" economy, as in much else in the encyclical.

Pope Benedict has made Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967, the foundation of his teaching. Its theme of "integral human development" provides Benedict with an incisive tool with which to scrutinise modern society and to suggest ways it needs to move forward for the true benefit of humanity. This lends a distinct flavour to the encyclical's approach, ...

More than 100 British people, assisted in many cases by friends and relatives, have gone to Switzerland to end their own lives. Although assisting in another's suicide is illegal, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided on compassionate grounds that criminal proceedings against the relatives would not be in the public interest. This reflects the wisdom that good law needs a stern face but a kind heart - justice ...

Karl Rahner, the Jesuit theologian, once said that he found it astonishing that people living in an era of TV talk shows should question the merits of confession. Twenty-five years after Rahner's death, confessional TV and magazine interviews are even more the norm, as are the greater use of the therapist's skills. Yet confession - the original way of unburdening one's soul - continues to decline in popularity ...

Demonstrations on the streets of Tehran, growing tensions between North and South on the Korean peninsula, and a policy shift by the leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, have one thread in common - they are all related to nuclear proliferation. The issue is near the top of the United Nations' agenda of threats to world peace, and shows little sign of dropping down it. The power struggle in Iran after ...

The pendulum eventually had to swing the other way. Since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church has wrestled with the true significance of the common priesthood of the People of God based on Baptism. It rebalanced in many fundamental ways the relationship between priests and people. But in the process, the ordained priesthood has undergone a silent upheaval. Some reassertion of priestly identity was overdue, ...