Religion has always been a matter of community building; a matter of building precisely those relations of compassion, fellow feeling and - I dare to use the word - inclusion, which would otherwise be absent from our societies.

Marriage has a unique place because it speaks of an absolute faithfulness, a covenant between radically different persons, male and female; and so it echoes the absolute covenant of God with his chosen, a covenant between radically different partners.

Actual human discourse happens within a number of contexts, not in some sort of unified public forum.

Christians should emphatically be campaigning for justice for the poor - but the Church is not a campaign.

What can we say about a marketing culture that so openly feeds and colludes with obsession? The Disney empire has developed this to an unprecedented degree of professionalism.

It takes the whole church to know the whole truth.

In a spiritually sensitive culture, then, it might well be that age is something to be admired or envied.