From a guest blogger: A position commonly held by ‘reformers’ in various religious traditions in this country may be summarised roughly in the following lines: If the central authority of a religion is at odds with beliefs held by the majority of that its adherents, the former is duty-bound to reconsider and even to change […]

The recent debate over the bonus of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Chief Executive, Stephen Hester, has reached its all-but-inevitable conclusion. He has decided it would be inappropriate in the present climate to accept it. Two arguments were made against his receiving a bonus. Firstly, it was argued that in a bank effectively owned […]

From a guest blogger: What is it that St. Peter’s Basilica, Climate Change, the Euro Crisis and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy have in common? I shall not keep you guessing. All four demonstrate that humans are not only special, but also without doubt the most special of creatures on Planet Earth. Consider for a moment […]

Let us start out from a hypothetical situation, in which you, the reader, have just taken ownership of an expensive car. Immediately afterwards you go on a brief holiday to a foreign country. The writer of this article offers to look after the car whilst you are on holiday. Most readers do not know the […]

From a guest blogger: Not for the first time has ‘the land of the free’ been a hopelessly wrongheaded epithet with which to label the United States of America. Many developed western nations find themselves embarrassed by histories of racial subjugation and segregation and they are rightly sorry about these records. But slavery is not […]

From a guest blogger: Some right-of-centre blogs have recently caught the eye. They concern chivalry and the unfortunate running aground of the Costa Concordia. ‘Women and children first used always to be the cry when all else was lost’, is the rough line taken by one commentator. At this point one can assume that whatever […]

The writer’s attention has recently been drawn to an address made by Cardinal Galen, Bishop of Munster between 1933 and 1946, on the topic of euthanasia. He was a trenchant critic of many Nazi policies, not least those towards the disabled whom the regime classified as ‘unproductive members of society’. Those resident in care homes […]

The first working day of the New Year is known by divorce lawyers as ‘Divorce Day’ or ‘D Day’ due to the abnormally high number of people enquiring about a divorce. It is said that the prolonged amount of time that a married couple spend together over Christmas creates a great deal of strain, leading […]