Today in the UK it is Easter Sunday for most Christians (although not those of the Eastern and Orthodox denominations) and it is the last day of Passover for Jews. To be celebrated in this Holy season for Jews and Christians –  the Feast of Unleavened Bread – is theRead More

On the last day of 2020, I wrote a piece that opens:  ‘My hope for 2021 is that all thinking people – including scientists – become more questioning and critical of science’.  Sadly, as we approach the end of the first quarter of 2021, things seem to have gone theRead More

A pontiff is infallible only when speaking ex cathedra on matters of doctrine. It’s kind of Pope Francis to remind us that otherwise a pope may be very fallible indeed. The latest reminder was given last Sunday, when His Holiness called for wholesale abolition of the death penalty. With allRead More

The Zika virus is fuelling an international effort to limit Brazil’s fertility. Writing from a Roman Catholic perspective, Dr Gerard M Nadal here analyses Pope Francis’s recent in-flight pronouncements on the matter. Even the dimmest wit in the Society of Jesus can make his thoughts plainly understood. So it mustRead More

‘Look who’s talking’ is a colloquial way of saying that even an unimpeachable idea may be compromised by the speaker’s personality. For example, few would argue against the notion of the sanctity of human life – but even fewer would like to hear this argument put forth by a serialRead More

As millions of Christians around the world were celebrating Easter Sunday, the Christians of the Muslim world were again under attack.  The April 2 Islamic jihad attack on a Kenyan school—where the Islamic murderers made sure to slaughter only Christian students, sparing fellow Muslims—was only the most spectacular attack. OnRead More

I can manage only so much spiritual exaltation at a quarter to eight in the morning, so that’s why I needed a second cup of tea before listening to Lucy Winkett deliver her oxymoronically titled Thought for the Day. It began with that infantile pedagogical device, so beloved of theRead More

Our established Church used to be called the Tory party at prayer. No more. The prayer part of it has been debauched by female priesthood and, to crown it all, episcopate. And as to the Tory bit, the Church is firmly positioning itself on the left of the political spectrum.Read More

‘Liberalism’ is not a term that admits of straightforward definition. To quote Nietzsche, ‘only something which has no history can be defined’ (On the Genealogy of Morality II.13), and liberalism has a complex and to some degree incoherent history. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill, for instance, is differently contouredRead More

Once upon a time — say, before the 1980s or 1990s — in quite a number of countries, people led normal lives: cases were argued, judicial decisions issued, laws enacted and conflicts solved without resort to reasoning of specifically or allegedly Kantian, or indeed Enlightenment/Kantian, types. Kant’s importance was foundRead More