| Should we outlaw the burka Free France’s decision to ban the wearing of the burka in public by law symbolises the difficulty of reconciling rights when they conflict. This lies at the heart of the dilemma of multicultural societies and applies not just to France but to Great ... | The disaffected must decide |
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Features
Address by Bishop Kevin Dowling CSsR Free The Church and the manner in which it exercises power. An abridged version of Bishop Dowling’s talk appears Last month Bishop Kevin Dowling gave an explosive talk attacking the leadership of in this week’s print edition of The Tablet. ...
|  Academic overturesJeremy SutcliffeProspects of greater autonomy and more money are tempting Catholic schools to take a close look at the Government’s offer to switch to academy status. But recent gaffes over cuts to the building programme have shaken trust in its ability to deliver its promises
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 Fine-tuning the universeEdwin CartlidgePhysicists and theologians gathered in Oxford last week to discuss the complex relationship between their two disciplines, and to pay tribute to physicist and priest the Revd Dr John Polkinghorne. But in doing so, some also posed challenges to his thinking... |  Lessons on the Armagh busDeclan McConvilleTrouble has returned to Northern Ireland with the start of this summer’s marching season. Here a Catholic deacon recalls the bad days of his childhood in the lawless Irish borderlands, and how one Protestant girl reached out across the sectarian divide... |
Human rights and wrongsConor GeartyWhen it comes to the Human Rights Act, it appears that not every corner of a foreign field is forever England, following a ruling by six justices over three of their colleagues in the Supreme Court last week relating to the death of a British soldier from heatstroke...
| Seize the momentBernard CotterThere are different schools of thought on whether a priest coming to a new parish should settle into the job for a year or so before making changes, or tackle the most obvious problems
immediately. One priest has found that, in many cases, he who hesitates is lost...
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 Bitter-sweet symphonyAlana HarrisMetaphors drawn from the musical form used to such dramatic effect by the Pope’s favourite composers help illuminate some of the apparent contradictions that many have seen in his evolving analysis of the post-Second Vatican Council Church ... |  Too safe a systemKevin DowlingCatholic Social Teaching is committed to subsidiarity, but far from local church communities being able to adapt locally, says the Bishop of Rustenburg, the Vatican is assuming more and more of a role in the conduct of the faithful... |
Mysteries of faithPhilip CrispinIt’s traditional for the General Synod of the Church of England to meet in York in summer. But as they deliberated at their university venue over women bishops, a very different spectacle was also being played out in the shadow of the Minster...
| Divine echo Daniel McCarthyThe faithful live in newness of life when faith, hope and love burn within them and as they observe God’s command to love one another as Christ loved mankind, writes Daniel McCarthy...
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Columnists
 David Blair‘Bashir will not stand trial – but only as long as he remains president’  Ann Wroe‘The pub is the place to go to even in your work clothes, still grimy from pit or field’
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Books and arts
Doomed dreams of Utopia Free
Engineers of the Soul
Frank Westerman
One evening in 1932, Joseph Stalin summoned dozens of the more biddable Russian writers – that is, without the likes of Pasternak, Bulgakov, Mandelstam or Akhmatova – ... |
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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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