Religion

Today, the Pope celebrated mass in Abu Dhabi and you do know what that means? It’s a mass in the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of Islam. And for the first time in centuries – whenever the Nestorian church last had its rites there, maybe 1300 years ago, the gospel was said in Arabic there. It was a happy, celebratory affair (way more cheerful, I may say, than the Pope’s mass in Dublin) preceded last night by a more serious affair, the signing of a joint declaration on Human Fraternity by the Pope and the grand imam of al Azhar. It’s the culmination of the Year of Tolerance proclaimed here by

The photo above is of my sister Carmel and me having tea a few days after our mother’s funeral. She looks cheerful, doesn’t she? That’s because she was: although we both missed our mother intensely, and always will, we had done most of our grieving before she died, as we watched her tortured by Parkinson’s disease and severe dementia. Carmel looks well, too. And she thought she was. Ovarian cancer plays that trick on women. The first symptoms tend to be annoying rather than alarming. A few weeks after this photograph was taken, I was reassuring her that Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a common response to bereavement – which it

Justin Welby is working in Thomas Cranmer’s old study in Lambeth Palace, a room that looks as if it hasn’t changed at all since the Book of Common Prayer was written here almost six centuries ago. It feels like a mini-monastic retreat: there is a desk, a crucifix, several Bibles and not much else. The 105th Archbishop of Canterbury studies and prays here, deciding how best to lead a national church whose Sunday services are now attended (according to its own figures) by barely 1 per cent of England’s population. These are new times — and require new tactics. When he was enthroned six years ago, he was seen as

Oh God. Or maybe not. There’s a letter in the Guardian today from assorted unbelievers asserting their right to a place on Radio 4’s God slot, Thought for the Day. ‘It’s time for the BBC to open Thought for the Day to humanists. Religion doesn’t hold a monopoly on ethical worldviews. Humanists… make sense of the world through logic, reason and evidence, and always seek to treat others with warmth, understanding and respect…’ Etc. It’s signed by Sandi Toksvig, Julian Baggini, the philosopher, agony aunt Virginia Ironside and Peter Tatchell. Plus 29 others. Consider folks. Is there a gap in your life that comes from not hearing enough of Sandi

What is the difference between the SS and Isis? A big one, it seems, in the eyes of Canada, where this week a federal court refused to review a decision to strip the Canadian citizenship of Helmut Oberlander, a Ukrainian immigrant with alleged ties to a Nazi killing squad in World War II. According to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), Oberlander served as an interpreter in the Einsatzkommando, mobile death squads that swept through Eastern Europe in the early years of the war, liquidating men, women and children, mostly Jews, but also homosexuals, gypsies and communists. It is estimated that the squad Oberlander allegedly belonged to, Einsatzkommando 10a, killed 23,000 civilians

No one on earth could fulfil the expectations that have been invested in the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. He is meant to  respond to the crisis of clerical child abuse and institutional self preservation within the global church during his first official address at Dublin Castle in a fashion that appeases the church’s critics in Ireland, who are, frankly, in no mood to be appeased. What he did do in his speech was express once again perfectly decent sentiments of abhorrence at the violation of children by members of the clergy. It won’t, and couldn’t, satisfy those who wanted him to use this occasion to make quite explicit

According to the Times, a new academic study finds that nations become richer when they become more secular. It contests the traditional idea that a nation gets rich, probably with the help of Protestantism, and then loses interest in religion. Instead, a nation first becomes secular, then becomes rich. There might be some truth in this: the keenest capitalists are often rational individualists who idolise financial success. Enough such people can affect a nation’s economy. But the study, judging from the Times’ report, explains the trend differently. The authors found ‘that a decrease in religious belief was linked to an increase in tolerance for individual rights, including of women and gay

The young writer Guy Stagg threw in his job a few years ago to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome – choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up only by his rucksack. His new book The Crossway grippingly describes his solitary journey. He was a pilgrim, not just a traveller, he insists – despite still being an atheist at the end of it. On this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, Guy explains why that makes sense to him. And I also take the opportunity

Rebecca Steinfeld (37) and Charles Keidan (41) have a moral objection to marriage. They’ve been together since 2010, have two very small children, but haven’t tied the knot. This, they say, is because the law doesn’t offer a knot they’re comfortable tying. ‘Charlie and I see each other as partners already in life, and we want to have the status of being partners in law,’ says Rebecca. They hold (and you may agree or disagree but it’s not a crazy view) that the concept described by the word ‘marriage’ is asymmetrical between the man and the woman, and inextricably tangled with religion and with cultural attitudes this couple (and others)