This week could well mark the point at which the “aggressively secularist” campaign by a few vociferous public atheists in Britain passed its high-water mark. It was defeated in battle not by an equal and opposite anti-secularist force, but by people in the public eye offering a few home truths. They simply pointed out that the values of British civilisation that are taken for granted were founded on trad­itional wisdom drawn from religious faith, and that the cohesion of society still relies heavily, if almost invisibly, on its continuing presence. This was the message that Cabinet Minister Baroness Warsi took with her on Tuesday at the head of an unprecedented delegation of British government ministers to the Vatican. Her sentiments were fully appreciated by her hosts. It was not so different from the messages that the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury exchanged next day at an event in Lambeth Palace to mark her Diamond Jubilee, attended by representatives of nine British faith communities. What they also had in common was an implicit call to religious believers to resist the pressure to stay out of sight.

The phrase “aggressive secularism” used by Lady Warsi to describe a phenomenon threatening the right of religion to be present in public life has been heard many times before, and it has been widely but wrongly interpreted as if war to the death had been joined on both sides. The reality is closer to a situation teachers are familiar with – that it takes only one bully to destroy the harmony of a class of 30. Militant atheist campaigners, utterly unrepresentative even of the majority of atheists, have had a chilling and coarsening effect on public discourse. They have managed to convince sections of the media that their virulent brand of anticlericalism had all but bullied religion off the national stage. Thus the success of the National Secular Society in challenging the right of one small local authority to make prayers part of the ...

Measured by the savagery of their effects on the very fabric of Greek society, the European Union’s present policies towards Greece demand to be called into question. Examining the ­economic logic behind those policies, however, leads to an even more alarming conclusion. Among political and economic commentators of Left and Right, pro-European as well as Euro-sceptic, there are almost none who think that the treatment prescribed, austerity piled on austerity year after year, has the remotest chance of working. In other words, it is the destiny of Greece to suffer worse and worse – until what? Revolution? Famine? Anarchy? Civil war?

One parallel would be Germany after the First World War. The allied victors, bent on revenge, decided on a deliberate policy of beggaring Germany – already heading towards starvation because of the wartime blockade – by crippling its industry and commerce. At the same time, they demanded swingeing reparations payments. But, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, the two approaches were incompatible. Either Germany was reduced to a land of hungry peasants, or it could keep its productive capacity intact to earn enough to pay the huge sums the allies demanded after Versailles; but not both. 

European policy towards Greece is remarkably similar to the way Victorian Britain treated debt defaulters. Until their debts were paid they were locked up – thereby making sure they were never likely to earn enough to be released. Greece’s situation is no more hopeful. Cuts in spending have forced its economy into severe recession with large falls in GDP year on year; rising unemployment increases the call on public spending, leading to more borrowing. The collapse in demand is closing businesses across the private sector, the very enterprises whose growth is needed if the deficit is to come down.

It is all very well to argue, as many northern European politicians have done, that Greece has brought ...

Having vetoed proposals at the United Nations Security Council to address the profound humanitarian crisis in Syria, the onus is now on Russia and China to find an alternative way. A war of words broke out after the veto, with the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, calling it “a betrayal of the Syrian people” and the Chinese Government replying that he was being “extremely irresponsible”. ...

To describe the covering up of clerical abuse in the Church as equivalent to omertà – the code by which Mafia bosses enforce the secrecy of their own criminal actions – is to use language as strong as any employed by the Church’s critics over the last 10 years. The fact that it comes from Mgr Charles Scicluna, Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the man with ...

Once again the Vatican has responded to a whiff of scandal in a way that makes it worse. Throughout the long and agonising saga of clerical child abuse, there were voices saying that it was all “got up” by the media, some denying that there was any substance to it at all. Sadly, that is how the curial machinery has chosen to deal with recent allegations of financial rather than sexual irregu­larity, even ...

The announcement that the Queen has accepted advice to strip the knighthood from Fred Goodwin, the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, brings into focus two models – the old-fashioned but still admired sense of public duty that motivates the Queen, and the prevailing ethos of business and finance where all that matters is the bottom line. It was that which drove Mr Goodwin (as he now is) to take Britain’s ...

Self-determination has become a key principle of international affairs. So when the leader of the Scottish Nationalists insists on having a referendum on the break-up of the union with England established in 1707, it is taken for granted that the result would determine what actually happens. And this would be true even if the English and Welsh were not similarly consulted, though their interests would also be affected. ...

President Obama has made a serious mistake. He is demanding that Catholic hospitals must make contraceptives available to their staff as part of their health-care packages. The new rules are part of the health-service reforms, which are the greatest achievement of his presidency so far. He appears to have been taken in by the fact that most American Catholics do not have personal moral objections to contraception ...

The eight solicitors who wrote to The Times this week demanding a public inquiry into sexual abuse by members of the clergy may have weakened their case by overstating it. They say they have seen “clear evidence of cover-ups in some of our cases” involving the Catholic Church, which is undoubtedly – and scandalously – true. But they believe these are “the tip of the iceberg”, which ...