This edition’s Letters pages include an account by Fr Dermot Power of an event that took place in London as part of the Intelligence Squared series of debates. MP Ann Widdecombe and Nigerian Archbishop John Onaiyekan were thrown to the secular lions, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, as they tried to defend the Catholic Church to an unsympathetic audience. Fr Power, who teaches at the Allen Hall seminary, makes two telling observations: that he has it on good authority that the bishops of England and Wales declined to participate, and that many people attending were very angry with the Catholic Church.

Some people will always be angry with the Catholic Church: the followers of Richard Dawkins, for example, and those who wish Christianity to have no power and influence in contemporary society. Then there are those who remain angry with the Church over child-abuse cover-ups, despite the efforts made to improve child protection and bring perpetrators to justice. But there are others too, including those who have been incensed by some of Pope Benedict’s remarks and actions during his pontificate: the Muslims upset by his Regensburg speech; the Jews by his gestures of reconciliation towards the Lefebvrists, including a Holocaust-denying bishop; now members of the Anglican Communion who feel that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been treated discourteously in the way overtures have been made over his head to members of his Communion. There are Catholics, too, who are also distressed by these events, and the manner in which people have been dealt with. They are fearful about ecumenical insensitivity and a lack of episcopal collegiality. The conclusion that many are reaching is that the Catholic Church has still not learned a vital lesson: that it is not only what you say and do that matters, but how you go about it. 

The tragedy of a gaffe-prone Church is that the very people who should defend its truths and track record are tempted not to – ...

Little more than a week ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, knelt together in prayer at the tomb of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey in a poignant demonstration of ecumenism and friendship between Catholics and Anglicans. The moment was perceived by many as a further sign of the growing reconciliation between the two Churches ...

Something of a consensus is emerging in the social ­sciences that the biggest handicap a child can face is the absence from the family of a father figure. Although it would be wrong to assume all children of lone ­mothers are damaged goods, it is clearly no help to integral personal development, as even those ideologically unsympathetic to traditional family patterns are coming reluctantly to recognise ...

In Washington, an agonised policy debate is taking place  over Afghanistan. The American-led invasion began eight years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists. It was clear that the Taliban, then the masters of Afghanistan, were hand in glove with the al-Qaeda leadership, both groups being violently anti-Western, Islamist in ideology and ruthless in action. Some response was inevitable ...

Weeks before he was elected Pope in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke in a Good Friday meditation of “filth in the Church”, a remark interpreted as a denunciation of those involved in clerical child sex abuse. Cardinal Ratzinger had more insight than most into the grave sins committed by priests against innocents: as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he had read plenty of reports ...