Austen Ivereigh

As well as being the 400th anniversary of Galileo s glimpse of Jupiter s moons 2009 is the bicentenary of Charles Darwin s birth — and the 150th anniversary of his epoch-changing work On the Origin of the Species Should it occur to anyone Dawkins put down that finch to dress the ninete

nbsp and why atheism is a comfortable indulgence Madeleine Bunting nbsp gets it

The fun goes on The UK advertising nbsp ombudsman nbsp may have to rule on God s existence following a complaint by Christians that a bus poster paid for by atheists violates industry standards In All Things regulars may recall the poster and the British Atheist Bus Campaign controversy which

In September 2003 Cuba s bishops issued their last major statement on the position of the Church in modern Cuba It contained penetrating commentary deploring the lack of liberties the clampdown on private businesses the penetration of church groups by state agents and a repeated call for cle

Amidst the coverage nbsp of the muted celebrations of the Cuban Revolution s 50th nbsp birthday nbsp some good news Cardinal Jaime Ortega of Havana and four other bishops were able for the first time since 1959 to celebrate Mass on Christmas Day in several Cuban jails Some of the prisoners we

In these end-of-year days nbsp which the BBC does not call the Octave of the Nativity of Our Lord the broadcaster invites well-known people to guest-edit its flagship radio news program Today This morning it was the turn of my old boss the Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murph

The BBC has the correct headline nbsp on Pope Benedict s curial speech story Pope attacks blurring of gender is far more accurate than all those headlines claiming nbsp that saving gay people is as important as saving the rainforests and similar riffs on Reuters nbsp misleading nbsp — s

This year for the first time the same song is competing for the UK Christmas no 1 music slot with a title borrowed from a famous Jewish-Christian exclamation Leonard Cohen s 1984 song Hallelujah exploded into mass consciousness after it was sung by this year s X Factor winner Alex

Critics of the Archbishop of Canterbury who try to dismiss him as a bearded lefty have been confounded by his very public disagreement with the prime minister Gordon Brown over how to respond to the fast-deepening recession In comments yesterday on the flagship BBC news program Today Row

Assisted suicide is back in the news in Britain because of two poignant stories with a lethal cocktail of accompanying dilemmas is it right to take your own life to end great suffering Should it be illegal for people to help you do so And is it right to show an assisted suicide on television Th