| Voting system needs reform Free As Edmund Burke remarked, if a constitutional system doesn’t bend under popular pressure, eventually it may snap. That may have been the lesson of the French Revolution, but it could also be the warning to be heeded from the British general election ... | A helping hand for the Pope |
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Features
Judgement Day for BarkingPaul DonovanCampaigning in the east London constituency of Barking had a biblical feel as election day approached, writes Paul Donovan. The UK Independence Party (Ukip) set the tone, with its leaflet declaring polling day to be Judgement Day.
Talking to people in the final days before the votes were cast it was difficult not to think that the real judgement being made in this area was on which party had the best immigration policy. ...
|  Where unity defeats bigotryPaul WilkinsonImmigration was a major but unspoken issue in the election until Gillian Duffy confronted Gordon Brown on the subject in Rochdale and he described her as a bigot. We report from two towns that have experienced influxes of migrants. But the response has been significantly different... |
Say it out loudGerard MooreCatholic worshippers are familiar with a variety of styles for the same kinds of prayer, and the revised translations in the new edition of the Missal, just given formal approval in Rome, will add to this breadth of experience. But for full appreciation, prayers must be declaimed aloud...
|  Shrouded in mysteryDavid SoxPope Benedict knelt and prayed before the Holy Shroud of Turin last Sunday. He’s called it an extraordinary icon. But is it the authentic burial cloth of Christ, or that of a man crucified more than a millennium later? And what does the Vatican really know?... |
Sisters on the front lineVeronica WhittyOne of the greatest influences on Florence Nightingale, the centenary of whose death will be marked this Wednesday in a service at Westminster Abbey, was the work of other ‘ministering angels’, the nuns of Catholic nursing orders, some of whom served with her in Crimea...
| Able advocateChristopher LambWith a fine legal brain, he could have pursued a no doubt lucrative career in the courtrooms of England and Wales. Instead, the man appointed last week as Archbishop of Southwark brings his formidable passion for law, order and justice to bear on behalf of the Church...
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Living liturgyDaniel McCarthyChristians are perhaps better known for undertaking 40 days of Lent than for sustaining the Easter feast for 50 days, writes Daniel McCarthy. The Opening Prayer encourages the faithful to fill out these days of joy with the constant affection proper to them ...
| Secrecy that begets abuse that begets more abusePatrick FlemingSome suggest celibacy is the primary cause of clerical child abuse. But one psychotherapist who has treated both victims and abusers argues that it is the inaction of the Church itself that has paradoxically perpetuated the possibility of sin...
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Columnists
Julia Langdon‘You have the enormous advantage of not being a member of the degraded last parliament’ Catherine Pepinster‘What is really causing the housing problem is lifestyle – of native Britons, not migrants’
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Books and arts
Different stories, same truths Free
Why Gods Persist: a scientific approach to religion
Robert A. Hinde
As an emeritus professor at Cambridge, and a notable peace campaigner who worked with the late Joseph Rotblat to ban nuclear weapons, Robert Hinde is an elder statesman among biologists. ... |
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Can the Church support abuse victims on its own terms?
Elena Curti
The clear message that emerged from the symposium on child sexual abuse held in Rome from ... Is the Church too slow in recognising that academies are the future for Catholic schools?
Christopher Lamb
According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ... Goodwin the scapegoat
Elena Curti
There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ...
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