I received an email from a friend with a specific interest in the Church’s role in responding to Scotland’s addiction crisis. Attached were twelve deceptively simple questions.
Read more >>Responding to drug addiction as if people really matter
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Magnifica humanitas and the call to holiness
With his social encyclical Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV has made good the promise contained in the choice of his name. It is a pastoral document that reaches out to non-Christians. It invites all to enter dialogue and engage in discernment. At the same time, it is a document firmly rooted in the Christian revelation of a triune God from whom all wisdom flows. Leo XIV evokes the tower of Babel as a negative example of human pride and to the wise architect Nehemiah who patiently rebuilds Jerusalem as a positive image. He calls for multilateralism and diplomacy rather than for a global political authority as some of his predecessors had done.
Read more >>The Catholic Church and rearmament
On Thursday 14 May, Ascension Day in some countries, Pope Leo XIV visited one of the largest universities in Europe, La Sapienza in Rome. In a wide-ranging address[1] which drew on the restlessness of St Augustine as a young man, at one point the Holy Father said:
Read more >>Magnifica Humanitas – on the “new things” of the 21st century
‘We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fulness in Christ, the splendour of which no machine can ever replace’ (Magnifica Humanitas, 15)
Read more >>AI – constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem?
The title of the encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, affirms the irreplaceable value of human beings, a theme which runs through the document. I was struck by the clarity with which Pope Leo lays out briefly the development of the social doctrine of the Church, emphasising the legitimate but distinct roles of Church and state. This gives a sound foundation for evaluating artificial intelligence (AI), and technology more broadly — how it can be used for good whilst it clearly has some built-in dangers? Pope Leo calls AI ‘A valuable tool that requires vigilance.’ AI presents unique challenges, but the criteria we need to judge how to act in response to those challenges are already to hand, in the form of Catholic social teaching.
Read more >>Day for Life – from language to culture
Introduction
Day for Life will be celebrated throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland on fathers’ day.
Read more >>Taxation, government debt, and the family
Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. In this third of three blog posts from the contributors to an event on the publication, Philip Booth writes about taxation, government debt and the family.
Read more >>Undemocratic filibustering or proper scrutiny? The death of the Terminally Ill Bill.
The Terminally Ill bill has run out of time in the House of Lords. Disappointed advocates of the bill to allow assisted suicide claim that the obstructive tactic of filibustering, mainly by a cohort of seven peers, caused the bill to fail. They point to the fact that the Commons voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Bill at its Third Reading by 314 to 291, a narrow majority of 23, and that the House of Lords, as an unelected body, has acted undemocratically in not following the lead of the Commons.
Read more >>Catholic social teaching, taxation and generosity
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales recently published a document on taxation called Render unto Caesar. There is relatively little Catholic teaching that is specifically on taxation. Catholics apply principles such as the universal destination of goods, the right to property and the primacy of the family to try to develop practical approaches to taxation in the wide variety of specific circumstances in which they find themselves. Unsurprisingly, they disagree.
Read more >>Taxation for the Common Good
Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. In this second of three blog posts from the contributors to an event on the publication, Professor Anna Rowlands writes about taxation and the common good.
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