Attempts to manipulate public opinion to give the Pope a hard time when he visits Britain later this month appear to have fallen flat. The Ipsos MORI poll conducted for The Tablet shows only limited awareness of the visit at least at this stage, but little hostility to it. While there has been no concerted effort by the Church to sell the visit to the public at large, secularist organisations have strained every muscle to turn popular feeling against him. Given the sustained attention in the media given to the scandal of clerical child abuse, on the Continent, in Ireland and in the United States, this is all the more surprising. Nor does it necessarily count against the Pope that the more controversial teachings he represents, such as on abortion and homosexuality, are out of step with British public opinion. Almost half the public thinks it is “a good thing that the Roman Catholic Church has strong moral views” and only one in five disagrees. Britain has not stopped being a tolerant society that respects people with convictions even if it does not share them.

Other findings from the poll show what an excellent opportunity the papal visit offers for Catholic teaching to reach out to sections of society who might otherwise be indifferent to it. For instance, 30 per cent of the A and B social groups, even at this stage, say they are likely to follow the visit fairly, or very, closely. Has there ever been a state visit to Britain before of which that would have been true? Among all social groups, this figure drops to one in five, but media exposure of the Pope’s activities will have increased exponentially by the time he arrives.

The child-abuse factor is clearly present, and may have been in people’s minds when they were asked whether they thought the Catholic Church was on balance a force for good. Nevertheless 41 per cent agreed, and only 17 per cent did not. Oddly, while the figure was lower than for when people were asked about religion ...

Given the complexities, tensions and compromises, the Catholic Church came out of the Northern Irish Troubles with its reputation less tarnished than it might have been. Its priests, deeply rooted in the nationalist and republican communities that felt besieged and beleaguered from all sides, must have known or suspected many things they felt had to be concealed. The worst and most embarrassing case, that of Fr James ...

Allegations that Catholics are unsuited to public office because they are "under orders" from the Pope buzz around like a fly that refuses to be swatted. In the land of the "constitutional separation of Church and State" it dogged President Kennedy in his day; it nearly derailed the presidential candidature of John Kerry in 2004; and it has now been raised as a reason why the next United Kingdom ambassador to the Holy ...

International outrage greeted the news from Iran that a woman accused of adultery there had been sentenced to be stoned to death. Sentence was postponed but the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, could now face execution by hanging. The case illustrates just how wide is the gulf between civilised standards of behaviour accepted in the West and the brutal way the social norms of “honour” are enforced in ...

One might have expected the Labour Party, or even dissident elements within the Liberal Democrats, to be in the vanguard of attacks on the Government’s proposals to slash public spending. In fact the most significant criticisms so far are coming from within the Tory fold. The Centre for Social Justice, founded by ex-Tory leader and now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has accused the ...