The Mystery and Disaster of Life Aberfan, tsunami, famine and other natural and human disasters raise the inevitable question, ‘How can a loving God allow this to happen?’ Since the martyr St Stephen’s Day, and in the wake of the [...]

Robbie Low on Jerry Springer and all that (Editorial warning: This article contains reports of strong language, degrading behaviour and blasphemy. If you are easily offended by graphic accounts of how your television licence fee is spent you may prefer [...]

One of the most surprising and troubling encounters of last year was with myself, semi-fictionalized. It was in a collection of essays about encounters with strangers in foreign countries. I only discovered this when it was chosen for a reprint [...]

Stuart Seaton assesses 'The Call' Many presentations of the orthodox position on the ordination of women begin, like Pope John Paul’s apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis or Forward in Faith’s report Consecrated Women, with Jesus’ choice of men only for the [...]

Patrick Henry Reardon on depressing determinism Che sera, sera One of my least favourite slogans is "what will be will be." What is expressed in this slogan may appear, of course, in other disguises, some rather sophisticated. For instance, it [...]

Anne Gardom visits a remarkable exhibition in London's East End Faces in the Crowd is an exhibition with a message. It looks at people, how they are perceived, how they relate to their environment, and how artists from Manet’s time [...]

Alan Edwards worships the King In the long lost days of the early 1950s before sex was invented and Bill Haley had rocked for a moment, let alone around the clock, the Headmaster of my all-boys grammar school decided that [...]

John Ebdon on intelligence of the infinite Like most performers (and I use that word advisedly to include anything from circus seals and chimpanzees to the more advanced primates enthroned in the palaces of York and Canterbury), I keep a [...]

The crossing of diocesan boundaries without permission or invitation is an offence, the Windsor Report claims, ‘not only against traditional and oft-repeated Anglican practice [alluding, no doubt to Lambeth 1988 and 1998] but also against some of the longest standing [...]

Message from Our Lord through Vassula Rydén Vassula Ryden is a Greek Orthodox laywoman who has been receiving messages from God for almost twenty years. On Page 6 of this issue Fr Peter of the Community of the Servants of [...]