One of the threats to Christianity in the 21st century is this idea that religion is best understood as a kind of aesthetic experience, and that you can get all your morality from that.

The issue of the environment as seen by Pope Francis is not a matter of purely scientific or, indeed, theological debate: it involves economic and political views on how the world's poor can be brought out of poverty while protecting the environment.

I'm very impressed by the imagery in the 'Apologia', which is a kind of sustained poem. It's not just a piece of apologetics of the sort you find in Jesuit literature: 'Why I came over', and so on. It's a tremendously rewarding book but requires perseverance on the part of the reader.

John Cornwell Quotes