With his public stance on gay marriage, and now over rules requiring Catholic institutions to make contraceptives part of the compulsory health care they must provide, President Barack Obama risks driving religiously minded American voters into the arms of his enemies.

On gay marriage he could have kept quiet, knowing how neuralgic the issue was becoming, as he was not announcing policy, just his opinion. On contraceptives he seems to have yielded to a lobby that was eager to embarrass the leadership of the Catholic Church by imposing rules it would plainly find intolerable. For an intelligent man, this is not an intelligent way to do politics. Legal action on behalf of numerous Catholic bodies has now been launched against the Government. They are asking the courts to overturn a legal requirement or “mandate” that would oblige them to rewrite the health-care insurance cover that they offer their employees, and, in the case of academic institutions, their students. Their revised schemes would have to allow not just contraceptive services but also sterilisations, and also the so-called “morning-after” pill which is said to work by inducing an abortion. These are contrary to the Catholic Church’s official teaching.

Mr Obama has perhaps been misled into thinking that the widespread dissent to these teachings among Catholics means he can disregard the views of the bishops without having to pay an electoral penalty. But he also appears to have forgotten the fundamental purpose of his health-care reform, which was to provide health insurance for those not covered, not to fiddle with the terms of existing insurance schemes.

Catholics of all persuasions may rightly think he should leave them well alone. He has made matters worse by introducing an ill-drafted exemption clause, which appears to offer protection to religious bodies but does nothing of the sort. To claim exemption, religious organisations have to show that their purpose ...

On 26 March 2000, Pope John Paul II made one of the most telling gestures of his pontificate. He placed a signed letter in a crevice of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the age-old Jewish way of communicating a special prayer to the Lord God of Abraham. The letter demonstrated beyond doubt that for him there was no going back to the days when Jews were reviled by Christians for having committed “deicide”. The late Pope’s move, part of his millennial programme of confessing past sins committed in the name of Christianity, has taken on fresh significance now that the Vatican II decree Nostra Aetate has become a key text in Vatican negotiations with the Society of St Pius X.

“God of our fathers,” the Pope’s letter said, “you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations; we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.” Clearly, every one of these words was chosen with care. They are in fact deeply embedded in the text of Nostra Aetate itself, which declared that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God”, and went on to say: “The Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

When Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre finally broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1988, Nostra Aetate was one of two Vatican II documents to which he took particular exception. The other was the Declaration on Religious Liberty, not un­related to it. The taint of anti-Semitism has continued to stain the reputation of the society he founded, not least when it emerged that one of the four bishops he ordained ...

Is there a right time to talk about gay marriage? Or to put it another way, is there a wrong time? In answering the latter question, certainly one Cabinet minister of the Coalition Government – a Government whose leaders are publicly committed to its introduction – would seem to think so. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond made it plain this week that he thought there were more important and immediate issues ...

The remarkable series of television documentaries made by Michael Apted, which began with 7 Up in 1964 and continued with 56 Up this week, has charted the lives of a dozen or so British children. It was evident from this week’s episode that for those educated in the 1960s, being born into very ordinary circumstances is no bar to enjoying prosperity. For the first few decades after the Second World War, politicians ...

In Britain, the anniversary of the day 67 years ago that hostilities ceased in Europe slipped by this week with scarcely a mention in the media. Across the English Channel, by contrast, it was marked in France by a public holiday, as it is every year. In the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, liberation from the yoke of Nazi militarism is also marked by a public holiday. It is even commemorated on ...

It is only three months since an international symposium on clerical child abuse was held in Rome, causing many observers to believe that the Church was beginning to understand the full scale of the scandal. There were wise words from Mgr Charles Scicluna, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), who deals with abuse cases, urging church leaders to put the protection of children above all else ...

“We were made for love” could well be a song played by the radio DJ Chris Evans, on whose show the former Abbot of Worth, Fr Christopher Jamison, pops up from time to time in a slot called “Pause for Thought”. In fact “We were made for love” is a comment made by Pope Benedict XVI to the young people of Britain during his 2010 papal visit and is quoted in a new document on vocations ...

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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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 ...