Although the main political parties are close in many areas of policy, the forthcoming general election is clearly regarded by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales as a watershed, and therefore as a suitable moment for some national stocktaking. Their pre-election statement “Choosing the Common Good”, published this week, paints a discouraging picture of the current state of society. It goes on to propose not so much changes of policy by politicians as a change of attitude by both government and public. The message is directed not only to the political class but to the whole country, and calls for a renewal of the moral culture.

Is this an idea whose time has come? Certainly there are increasing signs that the financial and economic crisis of the last 18 months is being seen, by all shades of opinion, as a symptom of something much deeper. The maximisation of profit on the part of industry and business, and the maximisation of choice on the part of consumers, are coming to be seen as an insufficient basis for a good society, particularly when both profit and choice depended on levels of debt, personal and corporate, which were unsustainable and unduly risky. The moral bankruptcy of capitalism and consumerism leads the bishops to turn to more ancient sources of morality, in particular the principle of the common good and the concept of virtue.

In this, they are helped by the insights of Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, on which “Choosing the Common Good” may be seen as a distinguished commentary.

This is indeed a time when Catholic Social Teaching may be coming into its own. In which case the bishops may be congratulated for their perceptive reading of the national mood, and their courage in taking the unfashionable course of suggesting that, rather than necessitating further endless rearguard actions against secularism, Catholic teaching may after all provide some of the answers the nation is looking ...

It would be foolish to pretend there is no problem: Britain has the highest rate of sexually transmitted disease, abortion for under-21s and teenage pregnancy in Europe. Surveys show that three-quarters of teenagers think the sex education they receive at school is poor. In those circumstances, it is understandable that a government would want to lay down the law, which is what Secretary of State Ed Balls is trying ...

It was an unprecedented event in Catholic history. Pope Benedict XVI summoned the entire hierarchy of the Church in Ireland to Rome this week and publicly rebuked them. The sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy was “a heinous crime and grave sin”, he told them. In a statement afterwards, the Vatican made clear it was the Pope’s view that there was no doubt “that errors of judgement ...

Collisions between immovable objects and unstoppable forces are never pretty, as the Church of England seems anxious to demonstrate. Its General Synod heard a desperate plea this week from Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to pull back from the confrontation over the ordination of women bishops that could see the Church fragmenting into at least three components. These three – Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical ...

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 ...