So, is Cardinal Newman admired by only a small minority of academics, or does he have broader appeal? Will he inspire the faithful in years to come?

“If,” asks Hannan, “we are allowed a vote on how to elect our MPs, why not a vote on whether those MPs run the country? If we can have a referendum on whether to have a mayor in Hartlepool, what about one on whether the majority of our laws should be handed down from Brussels?”

Suppose that one day the campaign for a referendum is successful: one day it might be, who knows? After all, it was part of the Lib Dem manifesto, and now they are in government. The question I want to ask is this: is there any obvious side on which Catholics should naturally come down?

Something like this question emerged recently in a lengthy debate, conducted by the editor of Standpoint magazine, the distinguished Catholic journalist Daniel Johnson, between the EU supporter Piers Paul Read (who represents a shade of Catholic opinion which I find congenial and convincing) and the Eurosceptic non-Catholic MP David Heathcote-Amory:

“Read: … I think you would agree on the principle of subsidiarity. I would certainly agree that anything that can be done by a smaller unit of government should be done by a smaller unit of government…

Heathcote-Amory: I believe that is derived from Catholic theology.

Read: Catholic social teaching, yes.

Heathcote-Amory: I put it to you… as a good Catholic, that you are temperamentally suited to submitting to a foreign authority, while I, as an angular dissenting Protestant, have a greater instinct for self-determination.”

There are two things to be said about that. Firstly, that though subsidiarity is supposed to be part of the European deal, the reality is that Brussels likes to micromanage every detail of our lives. The second is that Heathcote-Amory does have a point in one obvious respect: English patriotism has indeed been historically so defined by events like our defeat of the Spanish Armada, that it is difficult to disentangle it from hostility to Catholicism and resistance to domination from abroad.

That seems to be confirmed by Piers Paul Read in the Standpoint debate:

“Read:  ….one of the arguments in favour of the EU … is that Britain has been since the war a particularly badly governed country in almost any area you choose, whether it is education, health, energy or transport … I would rather be well governed by a Dutch bureaucrat in Brussels than badly governed by a British civil servant. [my italics]

Heathcote-Amory: You would have been entirely at home in the British Empire then. I would have been on the side of the liberation movement, and you would have been this patrician imperialist.” 

Heathcote-Amory may be a Protestant: but that is a view which recalls to me a certain kind of hostility to the domination of any nation by conglomerations of foreigners which it is entirely proper for a Catholic to espouse. It is almost identical with that of GK Chesterton, who would certainly have seen the EU as a quasi-imperialist hegemony, and who defined his own brand of English patriotism as being essentially anti-imperialist; it’s why he was so strongly in favour, for instance, of Irish independence: because he believed that a man who loves his own country should also respect the self-determination of others.

That’s why I say, bring on the referendum. If we ever get one, I shall vote to leave. If the EU really believed in subsidiarity, I might think differently. But it doesn’t: it believes, in the core of its heartless being, in centralist domination.

It is also intrinsically secularist and hostile to religion; but that’s another subject. As they say, watch this space.

“The heavenly Jerusalem itself could not have appeared more beautiful to me at that moment,” he writes. The teenage Joseph Ratzinger knew that his mother and sister Maria were in the church. You or I might have hastily pulled open the church door and blundered in, scouring the pews in search of eager family reunion. But what does the present Pope tell us in, Milestones, his short collection of memoirs published in 1997?
“I did not want to create disturbance so I did not go in.”

Why not? This was one of a huge list of questions I wanted answers to and one which forms part of a BBC Two film, Benedict: Trials of a Pope, to be shown next week before the arrival of His Holiness on the first ever state visit by a Pope to Britain. The most fitting person on hand to answer that question was his 86-year-old brother, Georg, now a retired choirmaster and canon at Regensburg Cathedral. Our production team had found a willing intermediary in family friend, Margarete Ricardi, who I met outside his home in the centre of Regensburg.

“How do I address him?” I asked nervously. “Is it OK to call him Herr Ratzinger?”

Margarete’s face betrayed a faint sense of revulsion. “No, no,” she said. “You must call him Herr Domkapellmeister [cathedral choirmaster]. Titles are very important in Germany.”

Clearly. Ninety per cent of my O-level German has all but disappeared, but this word was inserted firmly into my cerebral cortex and duly reappeared five minutes later as we made our introductions.

So what about that reluctance to enter the church?

“My brother has spent his whole life in devotion to the liturgy and knows that it is the central pillar of the Church’s life,” Georg told me. “He knows that if he had gone in, it would have created a disturbance. No, he said a prayer and that was it.”

The young Joseph went home. Father was waiting and later, that long-awaited reunion with his mother and sister. But if ever a story were to touch on so many important themes in the Ratzinger worldview, it is this one: the respect for the aesthetics of liturgical life, the centrality of order and a strongly held sense of boundaries: and not making yourself “the story”, realising that self-assertion is not a central component of personal freedom.

The making of this film has been something of a voyage of discovery for me. I can’t be the only Catholic in the world who had major apprehensions on April 19 2005 as the conclave made its decisive choice to elect the first German pope since the 11th century (I don’t count Adrian VI, born in Utrecht in 1459, part of the Holy Roman Empire). I was worried about whether the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith might be just a little too polarising. I am no expert of conclave arithmetic, but my hunch was that he simply had too many doubters inside the College of Cardinals to get the required votes. Wrong. And I have been wrong about him, too. It is not that he has changed radically since taking up the papacy; it is simply that when you have to make a one-hour programme on one of the most clever and gifted people on the planet you have to look behind the headlines and the angry rants on the blogosphere. In short, you have to do justice to the man as best as you can.

Something similar is going on with Pope Benedict at the moment as has been occurring with John Henry Newman in recent months. Recognising the brilliant intellectual acumen of an individual often leads to wings, sections of the Church, staking their claim. They want to possess them as “their own”. I can understand why. But there are occasionally rare moments when these drives towards colonising the output of a gifted mind simply fail on account of the sheer dynamism and multi-facetedness of the individual concerned. So Pope Benedict’s uncompromising language on homosexuality, his disciplining of liberation theologians and 2007 Motu Proprio on the Old Rite of the Roman liturgy all have conservatives ticking their boxes and approving. But how then to deal with some rather contradictory evidence, not least of all his championing of workers’ rights in Caritas in Veritate and his uncompromising critique of neo-liberal economics?:

“I would like to remind everyone, especially everyone engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity” (italics from the text).

Similarly, those who complain of the betrayal of Vatican II and have this pontificate down as unreservedly restorationist and insular have some explaining to do. How is it that such a man commands the respect of a towering figure and atheist intellectual such as Jürgen Habermas, so much so that they are prepared to engage in a dialogue in public? How is it that such a man devotes his first encyclical to a profound discussion of human love and ponders on the potential for Eros and Agape to be a bridge between the human and the divine? Furthermore, how is it that this pope has taken every opportunity to emphasise that care from the environment is not some woolly-minded aspect of New Ageism, but an integral part of his theological outlook? So much so that in January His Holiness called in many of the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See and berated them for the “economic and political resistance” that resulted in the failure of last December’s climate summit in Copenhagen.

When I ascended the roof of the Aula Nervi just a three-minute walk from St Peters, the charming Vatican architect, Guido Rainaldi, unveiled an amazing sight to me: more than 2,500 solar panels. Low carbon heaven. Green energy companies have been beating a path to the site and sounding out the idea of using Vatican employees as guinea pigs with their emerging fleet of electric cars and scooters. “Who knows,” said Signore Rainaldi, “perhaps when we get the first consignment of vehicles, the Holy Father will bless them. Maybe he can take one for a spin?” (The Pontiff does not possess a driving licence, but in theory that is no bar on him hopping on to a scooter.) That Joseph Ratzinger has not quite lived up to his predictable billing is a point well understood by the Italian senator Marcello Pera, with whom Pope Benedict wrote a book on Europe and culture called Without Roots. When I met Pera in the heart of Rome earlier in the year he told me of the reaction of his fellow legislators.

“There was a huge prejudice,” Pera said. “Everyone was expecting the Rottweiler. I had invited him to address the Senate: this was the first time a cardinal had ever set foot inside the building and they were amazed. He really charmed them.” What exactly was Pera doing, as a godless man, engaging with the Vicar of Rome?

“I wanted these secularists to reflect. They talk about the absolutist nature of human rights, but they have no idea of the basis of where such an idea comes from – namely, that everyone is made in the image of God and deserves respect and has an integrity based on that.”

Pera makes a further point: “Let’s look at this question from a historical point of view. What happened to Europe, when it denied Christianity? We had Nazism, Fascism, Communism, anti-Semitism. That means that when Europe tried to avoid its own roots and so the culture of rights, specially the respect of the human person, Europe finds itself in dictatorship.”

Good for Pera. Can you imagine this from the archpriest of atheism, Richard Dawkins?

But the real delight for me has been in engaging with the writings of this 83-year-old man. The encyclicals have been given deserved space and attention. Yet you have to go back to 1968 for his classic, Introduction to Christianity, a work in which it becomes abundantly clear that, for this gentle and determined Bavarian, that man does not create his own truth through effort and endeavour, but, as he writes: “To believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world, taking it as the firm ground on which I can stand fearlessly… to believe as a Christian means understanding our existence as a response to the word, the logos, that upholds and maintains all things.”

There are some wonderful reflections on Moses, the encounter with the burning bush, the voice of God and the seeds of the understanding of true monotheism – the God who replies, “I am what I am” being a transcendent presence “who cannot give his name in the same way as the gods round about, who are individual gods alongside similar gods and therefore need a name”.

Jump forward almost 40 years and we have volume one of Jesus of Nazareth. I must confess to being daunted by this work as many had started and failed, warning me that it was “hard going”. Be that as it may, what is genuinely moving about the encounter one undergoes in reading this book is the sheer power and depth of faith in the 335 pages. Forty of those are a flowing meditation on the Lord’s Prayer and the Pope writes with such a direct voice, occasionally moving away from a more formal and academic tone – you almost feel he is in the room, singling you out, speaking to you directly. “We must also keep in mind that the Our Father originates from [Jesus’s] own praying,” he writes, “from the Son’s dialogue with the Father. This means that it reaches down into depths far beyond the words… each one of us with his own mens, his own spirit, must go out to meet, to open himself to, and submit to the guidance of the vox, the word that comes to us from the Son.” And to think that volume two on the Passion, death and Resurrection has already gone off to the publishers…

These books are not exercises of the Magisterium, as Pope Benedict reminds us in the preface to his first volume: “Everyone is free to contradict me. I would only ask for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding.”

That this goodwill has been at times conspicuous in its absence in the run-up to next week’s visit has been obvious for some time. I put that down to a trinity of factors which, when mixed in a heady brew, account for a lot of the reservations: an ever-present strain of anti-Catholicism here in Britain, a small but potent anti-German sentiment and, of course, the understandable raw nerve touched by the seemingly endless crisis of clerical sex abuse.

It is this last factor which deserves some detailed attention and in our BBC film we do our best to take account of how fair it really is to single our Pope Benedict for special criticism. The man I approached to help me evaluate all this was John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and a man described as having a “maddening objectivity” by the online Catholic magazine Godspy. In a Catholic world of tribal rivalries, Allen is trusted by most to get it right and to be fair. That is why his Vatican contacts are the envy of most members of the fourth estate.

Allen’s take is principally that the bottle is overwhelmingly more full than empty. The Pope has met the victims of abuse on several occasions, made numerous apologies and embraced a zero-tolerance policy for clergy found guilty of abuse. The statute of limitations has recently been extended to 20 years to allow abuse cases to be pursued with greater ease, placing the Catholic Church ahead of many civil authorities in this respect. Moreover, it was the Pope, shortly after his accession, who moved to isolate Fr Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, after years of mounting evidence of abuse and corruption, evidence which culminated in a Vatican investigation into his movement. None of this happened under Pope John Paul II and many have suggested that the then Cardinal Ratzinger would have taken action earlier, but supporters of Maciel acted to block any initiatives. But it is clear this is not a man in denial.

When I spoke to Allen in Rome about the effect all this was having on the Holy Father, he said: “I have spoken to people who work in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who were there in the rooms when case files were being read out loud and they saw the kind of reaction of disgust and horror and shock that washed across the visage of Joseph Ratzinger.

“I don’t think that was for show. This was away from TV cameras in a private room. I think that genuinely does speak to his experience.”

As my quest to understand Joseph Ratzinger gathered momentum a clearer picture was emerging. Far from questions of massive personal culpability, it seemed to me that the implosion of recent cases presents the leader of the Catholic Church with a very heavy personal burden. This man’s talents are not best served by details of management and structures: he is a first-rate theologian and thinker. As John Allen put it,
“There is a root kind of frustration that he must feel. This a mind that is so given to the quest for order, to creating logical links from A to B to C leading to the glories of Christian orthodoxy. Now to be put in a position of governing not only a Church that seems in meltdown in many ways, but a world which changes every 15 minutes as blog sites are refreshed and where the situation to which he is trying to respond is constantly in flux, I think has to be a source of angst.”

But also remember that this is a man whose instincts are also geared to searching for truth. On the recent flight to Fatima in May a posse of journalists on the papal plane took their seats and when one of them asked about any possible links between the predicted sufferings of the Church in the Fatima visions and its present difficulties, Pope Benedict replied with candour: “The greatest persecution of the Church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside, but is born in sin within the Church. The Church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice.”

It was a decisive riposte to those in the Vatican who had sought to blame everything on the media and “idle gossip”. As my former prior in the Dominicans, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, told me: “The Pope is just too honest a man to accept the idea that all this is simply somebody else’s fault. He knows it comes from us and that we have to face it. And I find this all very promising and I hope it leads to a more honest church, a more transparent Church and a humbler Church.”

The predictions of an inflexible Vicar of Rome, “God’s Rottweiler”, in 2005 have been misplaced. Many of us got it wrong and I am happy to say so unambiguously. But I end on this thought. My old novice master, Herbert McCabe OP, was always reminding us of the massive dilemma at the heart of all theology: that as humans we are drawn to God and made to share union with the Creator but our ability to use words to reference all this is always doomed to failure, given the gap between our finite status and the transcendent force that lies beyond our grasp. T S Eliot puts it best in “Burnt Norton”:

words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

Pope Benedict, shy and retiring man that he is said to be, might be horrified at this suggestion. But might it be that one of the reasons is he is so hard to categorise, to put into that simple neat box, is that his writings, teachings and insights are an albeit imperfect reflection of that infinity and immutability that is the “peace that surpasseth all understanding”?

Mark Dowd’s film, Benedict: Trials of a Pope, will be broadcast on BBC Two on Wednesday September 15
at 7pm

The police have estimated that security for the Pope’s visit will cost no more than £1.5million ($2.3million).

The official papal visit website has announced that it will be live-
streaming all the events of the four-day trip.

The Church is investigating a possible second miracle at the intercession of Cardinal Newman.

Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy contrasts Benedict XVI and John Henry Newman.

Catholic Voices Media Monitor responds to Independent columnist Johann Hari’s attack on Pope Benedict.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York discusses his debt to the Society of Jesus (audio).

Stephen Barr responds to Stephen Hawking’s claim that God was not necessarily the creator of the universe.

And the Scottish Church has unveiled a new tartan to mark the Pope’s visit next week.

Hillary Clinton described the planned burning as a “disrespectful, disgraceful act”. More to the point, perhaps, David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, warned that there could be retaliatory action against US troops; presumably he meant from Afghans who would normally have been supportive or at least neutral. Protests have already taken place in the capital Kabul at which effigies of Pastor Terry Jones (of the ironically named Dove World Outreach Centre) were burned alongside the American flag.

Christians all over the world are busily disassociating themselves from the proposed Koran burning. L’Osservatore Romano, under the headline “No one burns the Koran”, reported Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay (and before anyone says that should be “Mumbai”, “Bombay” is what the locals mostly still call it), saying “I condemn this completely insensitive threat that is disrespectful to the Holy Qur’an, on behalf of the Catholic Church”. L’Osservatore Romano went on to report that Christians around the world were protesting against the threatened event.

Well, no doubt they are. But it will all do no good: al-Qaeda has already said that this affair just shows how hostile to Islam we all are in the West, and that’s what will be generally believed, for all Hillary Clinton’s insistence that we all respect Islam, truly, we really do.

Now, I really do not think this book-burning (indeed, any burning of any book) should take place. But it probably will; and it’s no good Hillary Clinton pleading that no TV cameras should be present at the event. They will be, of course; and if no one intervenes to stop it, then the resulting image of Christians burning the Koran will be around the world in seconds.

The fact is that there is a way this could be handled if the local authorities in Gainesville, Florida, have the wit to think of it: it seems that this event will be illegal, because Pastor Jones has no permit for a bonfire. Why don’t they just have fire-engines at the ready, and charge in to put out the fire immediately: then the TV pictures would be of Christian firemen extinguishing this anti-Islamic outrage. Simple.

But would even that do any good? Would not the headlines all over the Middle and Far East then be “Christians commit waterlogging outrage against the Holy Qur’an”? The trouble is that whatever we do or say to try to reassure the Islamic world about our respect for them and their religion, they will continue to believe that we privately harbour a profound hostility towards them and everything they stand for.

We just don’t begin to understand them, that’s the problem. If they started to burn piles of Bibles, we wouldn’t turn a hair, because it’s not the material, physical reality of a copy of the Bible that makes it the Holy Bible, it’s what it says. Why don’t they think like that about mere physical copies of the Koran? Search me.

Meanwhile, I have a profound respect for Muslims and for their beliefs. Honestly. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

My hopes were dashed after about 90 seconds. Robertson’s dramatic prologue introduced a “typical” paedophile priest who would be perfect for The Pope On Trial: The Musical but did not accord to reality. Paedophile priests are apparently “lonely” and “sexually frustrated” individuals, shackled by the vow of celibacy and the Church’s teaching that masturbation is a mortal sin. Supposedly then, Robertson’s pseudo-psychological investigations have discovered a form of priest who molests and rapes young children, but when it comes to masturbation and sexual relations, he is paralysed by the fear of eternal damnation, his selective scruples overwhelm him and his heart brims with obedience and loyalty to the Church.

The reality of the sexual abuse crisis is that it is disgusting and heartbreaking. As a Catholic especially, I find it impossible to read about the terrible cases that have come to light without feeling deep anger and sorrow for innocent children who have suffered so unspeakably. One simply cannot begin to imagine what the victims feel and suffer. But a recurring feature in this discussion seems to be profound ignorance by vocal critics about how canonical procedure works within the Church and the fundamental misunderstanding that the Church utilises its internal disciplinary procedures to usurp civil law. This misunderstanding was the basic premise on which Robertson built his case.

Given the severity of the sexual abuse crisis, it was in some ways encouraging that Geoffrey Robertson’s lecture was so busy, because it seemed to signify concern about victims of sexual abuse and a sincere desire to critically assess the solutions. On the other hand, objective analysis of very harrowing cases can have a dehumanising effect. During last night’s talk the ability to “detach” reached uncomfortable new boundaries when a surprising amount of tittering erupted while Robertson jovially discussed the merits of using the term “sodomising” when talking on US television about the sexual abuse of children. Within academic discussions, we are often rightly encouraged to “take a step back”, but this lighthearted slant was very far away from the pain at the heart of the issue.

The need to safeguard every vulnerable member of the Catholic Church from abuse in any form requires critical thought based on solid knowledge and must be tempered with compassion and sensitivity. Unfortunately, last night’s lecture did not strike this balance.

He said: “Young people and friars from six continents, 260 in all, arrived in three double-decker coaches to spend the day with the community and members of the Clare Priory parish.

“Their visit was part of a week-long international Augustinian Youth Encounter at the Westminster Diocesan Centre outside London. The gatherings are held every two to three years for members of the Augustinian family throughout the world in their late teens to early 30s. This is the first time AYE has come to the Britain.”

Fr Middleton added: “Eighteen months ago, when the Augustinians in the UK accepted the invitation to host the AYE, I said that they must come to Clare Priory because this is where the friars first settled. This is where the seeds for the order in the English-speaking world were first sown. Thursday was an opportunity to reconnect with the past and to draw new energy for the future.

“We celebrated Mass in a marquee in the priory grounds, followed by a barbecue and a ceremonial tree-planting to mark the visit, with helping hands from every continent. It was a charmed day.”

After group photographs outside the priory, founded in 1248, the young people and friars left for Cambridge for evening prayer at St John’s College and some free time.

They were joined by the Prior General for the world-wide Augustinian order, Fr Robert Prevost OSA, who stayed with the youth gathering until Saturday evening, when he celebrated the closing Mass.

Members of the six parishes run by the friars in England and Scotland took part in AYE 2010, from August 9 to 15, and helped to run the week of discussions, workshops, worship, prayer and socialising.

The theme for the youth encounter was “I call you friends”, taken from Jesus’s parting message to his disciples in John 15.

Eighteen countries were represented: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Britain and America.

In his homily Fr Middleton said: “In our prayers, our workshops, our garden fete and in our discussions at AYE we have looked at what it means to be a friend, what can work against friendship, what builds it up. We explored some of the social injustices that lurk on the horizon and we considered some ways of countering those injustices. Coming to Clare Priory, the oldest and very first priory in Britain, we recognise the value of what is now hidden in the past.”

Although the date and time of their meeting isn’t known, it’s possible the former Prime Minister will join religious leaders when they meet the Holy Father next Friday at St Mary’s College in Twickenham. Some reports say he will also accompany the Pope for some of his trip.

Through his Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which he created after leaving Downing Street, Mr Blair has been trying to promote respect and understanding about the world’s major religions and show them as a force for good.

However, the organisation faced some criticism last year when a member of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, Mgr Michel Schooyans, claimed the organisation was an instrument to further Mr Blair’s “messianic” revision of human rights, moulding all religions into his own idea of truth.

A foundation spokesman strongly denied the charge, saying it was “definitely not looking to discover or create a lowest common denominator among faiths”. On the foundation website Mr Blair insists that the aim of his organisation is not to “supplant or undermine” other religions, but rather “allow people to respect and value the other person’s beliefs, to understand what those beliefs really are, and to let those of different faiths see the values they often share”.

But there is also the serious problem of Mr Blair’s voting record on life issues. Among other policies, he voted to retain the 24-week limit on abortion and championed civil partnerships legislation. He has yet to publicly repudiate any of these since he was received into the Church in 2007.

Yet were it not for Mr Blair, this state visit may not be taking place.
According to sources, he was one of the first to support inviting the
Pope after paying three visits to the Vatican while he was the nation’s
political leader. Cherie Blair also had her own private audience with
Benedict. Their visits were followed by Gordon Brown who met Benedict
XVI twice at the Vatican, once as Prime Minister last year when he
invited the Pope on behalf of the Queen.

His predecessor, John Major, on the other hand, never visited the Vatican.

Ian Paisley has urged the British Government to cancel the Pope’s state visit.

A blind activist who exposed forced abortions in China has been freed from jail.

Christopher West, the promoter of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, is preparing to respond to critics following his sabbatical.

Stephen Glover suggests that it is those who oppose Pope Benedict’s state visit who are the “real bigots“.

Damian Thompson is dismayed by Peter Tatchell’s Channel 4 documentary attacking the Pope.

Conrad Black says John Henry Newman’s greatness transcends religion.

And a Muslim stonemason who spent nearly four decades helping to restore a Catholic cathedral in France has been immortalised as a winged gargoyle peering out from its façade.