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.

So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.

Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

We must support government coercion over enforcing international protocols and speed limits on motorways if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions of people to die.

My visit this autumn is an opportunity to continue that rich tradition of visits between Canterbury and Rome.

I have, by God’s grace, learned as a member of the Christian community what is the nature of God’s mercy, which does not leave me to overcome my sin by my own effort, so I have something to say to the fellow-sufferer who does not know where to look for hope. And what I have to say depends utterly on my willingness not to let go of that awareness of myself that reminds me where I start each day—not as a finished saint but as a needy person still struggling to grow.

It takes the whole church to know the whole truth.