Can politics regain its bearings?

With public regard for Parliament at its lowest for 70 years or so, a new proposal by the think tank Compass on capping ‘fat-cat’ pay, which has gained wide support from the Left and Centre, could help reinvigorate debate, argues this long-term observer of the political scene...

The man who reached the unreachable

Cletus Babu is one of the most influential Catholics in southern India, despite leaving the priesthood. His social development organisation helps more than half a million rural poor. And, as he told Thomas Norton, his ideas have been exported around the world...

Just add water

It is reputed to cure everything from leprosy to ulcers but reports of miracles attributable to water at Holy Well in the Malvern Hills are thin on the ground these days. The last in our series sees an attempt to discover just what makes Holy Well ‘holy’...

Rise of the super-parish

Portsmouth, like many other dioceses in Britain, has been preparing itself for a future with fewer priests and fewer practising Catholics. The changes involve the creation of new pastoral areas that cluster current parishes in increasingly closer union...

Triumph and tragedy

Edward Kennedy, who died this week, was the last in the generation of a New England dynasty that brought American Catholics into mainstream US politics, and whose life mirrored its subsequent roller-coaster ride...

For God in others

We are nourished in the liturgy so that we may minister to God in people, writes Daniel McCarthy. This prayer implies that Christ stands in the world to call us from the Communion we have just received, to serve him in our sisters and brothers...

Be still ... Hush ... Listen

The silence that churches offer is one of their most undervalued and underused gifts to the faithful. In silence we encounter God, and God gets to grips with us. Pastor and congregation need to do everything they can to help this process...

The Language Game

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