The Catholic bishops of England and Wales did not experience first-hand the super-heated reaction of the mass media, whether accurately reflecting public opinion or not, to Pope Benedict’s attack on the “unjust” consequences of British anti-discrimination legislation. For they were in the room with him when he said it, at the end of their routine ad limina visit to the Vatican.

Aggressively secularist groups like the National Secular Society seized on the incident to whip up support for their campaign against Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain in September, which his address was mainly about. But the larger jury, the British public, will not yet have made up its mind and can still be persuaded either way. That is why the Church must take seriously, and ponder deeply, the underlying reasons for this week’s furore. It is a pity the bishops missed it.

The focal point of this reflection needs to be the Catholic attitude to homosexuality, for it was this that sparked the explosion. Public opinion on homosexuality is becoming more tolerant, as the British Social Attitudes Survey recently reported, and that poses an ever greater challenge to the Church to put its case across. In its dealings with the Government over the implementation of the Sexual Orientation Regulations in 2007, which effectively squeezed Catholic child-welfare agencies out of the all-important work of adoption placement, the ­bishops stood by the principle that children need a parent of each of the sexes, not that homosexual men or women are unsuitable parents per se because of their “unnatural” sexuality.

It was the better argument and many people agreed with them, but this approach left the specific issue of homosexuality unexamined. The debate about the Equality Bill, on the other hand, did raise the issue. The Government’s decision this week to back down over the bill and no longer insist on its more precise criteria for when discrimination ...

Recent developments in the Catholic Church have sparked fears of an imminent counter-revolution against the Second Vatican Council. Anxiety is mainly focused on the new translation of the Mass into English but also on a more fundamental call by the papal master of ceremonies, Mgr Guido Marini, for a “renewal of the renewal” which would entail the recasting of the entire Latin liturgy. But is Vatican II ...

The earthquake that hit Haiti a week ago is a catastrophe of biblical proportions. The people of Haiti were already among the poorest on the planet – apart from the one per cent who owns half the nation’s wealth. The death toll from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake may reach 200,000 or more, and most victims were crushed by falling buildings. This is itself a mark of extreme poverty – it is estimated ...

The polls tell us that immigration continues to head the list of issues of most concern to the British public. What this means is less clear. There is anxiety about community relations and failure to integrate, particularly with reference to Muslims who were, or whose families were, initially from Pakistan. There is the more recent influx from Eastern Europe following the enlargement of the European Union ...

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to advance Pius XII to the next stage of the canonisation process has brought criticism from within the Jewish community in Britain and elsewhere. Elevation to the status of “venerable” follows recognition of Pius’ “heroic virtues”, an unfortunate expression in the circumstances because the wartime Pope’s heroism – or lack of it – in ...