Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.

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

Perhaps a good resolution for the new year would be to keep asking what world we want to pass on to the next generation. Indeed to ask whether we have a real and vivid sense of that next generation.

Christian teaching about sex is not a set of isolated prohibitions; it is an integral part of what the Bible has to say about living in such a way that our lives communicate the character of God.

St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return.

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.

A public is a necessary fiction.