The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has investigated the activities of the organisation which represents the great majority of religious sisters in the United States, and it did not like what it found. As a result, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has been told to accept close supervision of its activities, to bring it back into line with church teaching and policy. Roughly nine out of 10 of the 50,000-plus nuns in America are in communities affiliated to the conference, which is recognised by the Vatican but which now risks losing that status. The conference is alleged to have had a radical feminist agenda, and its unacceptable activities include giving currency in various ways to opinions deemed contrary to church teaching, such as over the ordination of women, the treatment of homosexuals or abortion.

It is fair to say that the discussion of such opinions constitutes only a small part of the conference’s activities, that these are not its official policy but the views of some of its members, and that many nuns in groups affiliated to it may disagree with some or all of them. It is also fair to say that the leadership of the conference has seemed willing to risk or even provoke a reaction from the church authorities. More nuanced critiques might on occasion have been more prudent.

That does not mean the CDF’s reaction is well advised. With its usual indifference to public relations, the Vatican has outraged vast swathes of American Catholics who hold nuns in the highest esteem, not least because of their magnificent work in health care and education and in the alleviation of poverty and hardship.

They are indeed the glory of the American Catholic Church. Unlike the bishops, they were untarnished by the scandal of child abuse and subsequent cover-ups. The Leadership Conference tended to take a different line from the bishops on such matters as President Obama’s health-care reforms, perhaps because they are ...

Across Europe, public opinion is rebelling against austerity. The first round of the French presidential election, which saw the socialist François Hollande in the lead and a strong showing for Marine Le Pen on the far right, is the clearest indication yet of this change of mood. Political upheavals in Holland, Greece, Italy and Spain tell a similar story.

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It is an important principle that the United Kingdom should not condone or in any way cooperate with torture. That has been the issue in several high-profile human-rights cases, ranging from the Government’s desire to deport the Islamist preacher Abu Qatada to Jordan, to the accusation – denied – that the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw permitted the rendition to Libya of opponents of Colonel Gaddafi’s ...

A common charge made by people hostile to religion is that it is harmful rather than beneficial. This has become a popular misperception. In fact, a growing body of evidence points the other way. The latest report from the think tank Demos confirms previous findings that people with a declared religious belief are more likely to engage in voluntary service to the community, more likely to be open-minded on race and immigration, ...

Catholicism’s reputation as a monolithic belief system is plainly no longer deserved. The latest evidence comes from what was until not long ago one of the most conservative parts of Western Catholicism, the Catholic Church in Ireland. A new survey of grass-roots opinion indicates that the typical Irish Catholic no longer accepts church teaching on a range of issues, mainly to do with sex and gender. Yet in terms ...

By any utilitarian calculation, the Falklands War was not worth fighting. Victory brought no advantage to Britain, only the expensive requirement henceforth to maintain an enlarged garrison and airbase.
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The superb Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach are ­familiar to those who know their choral music, but not so well known outside that circle. What the ­public is beginning to appreciate is something more accessible – the story of Christ’s Passion represented, and even reinterpreted, as secular drama.

The ability of drama to enliven and project religious messages was expressed in the Middle ...

Sometimes a week is not just “a long time in politics”, as Harold Wilson remarked, but also a critical turning point when a long run of political good weather gives way to a long run of bad. As Tony Blair found to his cost, the end of an affair with the electorate can leave behind an irreversible sense of alienation and disillusion.
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Important though it was to Mexican Catholics, Pope Benedict’s first visit to a Central American country was remarkable mainly for the stamina the 84-year-old pontiff displayed after a long and tiring journey. He made one remark that raised eyebrows, saying it was not right that the laity “should feel treated as if they hardly count in the Church”, and calling for an end to “sterile divisions, criticism ...