Dignity day by day

There are major ethical dilemmas facing those caring for people with dementia, according to a report published this week by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Here, a member of the council’s working party looks at their conclusions...

A real and unique opportunity

Pope Benedict XVI will make the first papal state visit to Britain next autumn. It will be many months before details will emerge of precisely where he will go and who he will meet. We asked a selection of leading Catholics to tell us their hopes and expectations for the trip...

Role of a creative minority

Only 20 per cent of the population of the Czech Republic is Catholic but Pope Benedict called on them to transmit traditional Christian values. During his three-day visit last weekend he warned that failure to do so risked cynicism and relativism...

Class struggles

Reform of education in Britain has done more than most other government policies to change the country. In this excerpt from her memoirs, the Catholic former Labour minister recalls how she and Tony Crosland, brought up in the Plymouth Brethren, pushed the comprehensive ideal...

Changing rite, unchanging truth

It is more than 45 years since Sacrosanctum Concilium was published, urging reform of the liturgy and greater participation of the laity. Here, a leading academic argues that reform has always been a part of Catholic liturgy – and warns against romantic notions about the rite of the Mass ...

Out of captivity

So that Creation would be united with its Creator, Christ chose to advance not power but our human infirmity, writes Daniel McCarthy. Wholly divine, by becoming wholly human, apart from sin, he ensured that we could share in his divinity...

From Byzantium to Kent

A Kent parish found that the idea of mounting of an icon screen – an iconostasis – in their church has proved to be an inspiration that has engaged a wide range of people, and provided many unanticipated challenges...

Round about the mulberry bush

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