Catholic education faces a number of serious challenges including cultural and political disrespect for, and hostility towards religion in general and Catholicism in particular, and lack of knowledge of, and commitment to, Catholic beliefs and values among Catholic educational administrators, school managers, teachers, and other staff, as well as the diminishing percentage of even nominally Catholic staff. I set these matters within the context of broader challenges surrounding Catholic education, deriving from three cultural movements: the reformation, the emergence of liberalism, and the scientific revolution, which undermined the synthesis of scripture, theology, and speculative and practical philosophy achieved in the high middle-ages. I propose in response a creative critique showing that what is of authentic value in modernity can be accommodated within the traditional synthesis. I also connect that tradition with strands of eastern philosophy suggesting that the movement of people, ideas, and traditions from Eastern cultures into historically Western societies provides an opportunity for further synthesis of a wisdom-based approach to education.

The idea of ‘connatural knowledge’ is attributed to Aquinas on the basis of passages in which he distinguishes between scientific and affective experiential knowledge of religious and moral truths. In a series of encyclicals beginning with Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris, popes have celebrated and commended Aquinas as the supreme guide in philosophy and theology and in some of these cited his discovery of connatural knowledge. The course and context of his ‘elevation’ are explored before proceeding to a discussion of moral knowledge in which different forms of non-theoretical cognition are identified. This leads to an examination of work by Elizabeth Anscombe on the factuality of ethical judgement and connaturality. Aquinas and Anscombe offer important insights but more work remains to be done. Moral knowledge is a many-faceted thing. More accurately, it is not one thing but many things analogously related both by their modes and by their objects.

Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the most gifted and productive philosophers of the decades following the Second World War. Her writings present challenges to readers: some of them are very difficult to comprehend while others seem philosophically-minded yet situated outside of philosophy as such. There are also the issues of whether she had a philosophical method and of the influence of Wittgenstein on the manner of her approach. A summary and estimate of Anscombe’s enduring contributions is presented before exploring the style and aims of her philosophical work. Then two of her writings on religion are examined and their implications for her attitude to philosophy considered.

The latest sex abuse scandal in the American Catholic Church involving Cardinal McCarrick is compared with that of 2002 in the archdiocese of Boston, and that of 2012 involving Cardinal O'Brien of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Attention is given to aspects of the latter in part because of the privileged perspective of the author. Thereafter, sociological and other reasons are proposed as to why the Catholic priesthood has been afflicted with cases of sexual abuse and sexual impropriety. The issue is considered of the genesis of homosexuality, and apriori assumptions are rejected taking it instead to be an empirical question. There is analysis of the common distinction between (homosexual) orientation and activity, and of its relevance to the issue of admission to seminary formation. Noting that Vatican documents and statements do not refer to ‘orientation’ but to ‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’ (tendenze omosessuali profondamente) these notions are related to those of disposition and activity, and it is argued that the important distinction is between orientation and the rest. Finally, it is noted that both traditional and progressive Catholics are often given to idolatry about the Church and to Pelagianism about their faith and practice.

There has been public outcry from philosophers and others at the prospect of the closure of Heythrop College, University of London; yet the nature and history of Heythrop remain little known. It is apt and timely, therefore, as its likely dissolution approaches, to provide a brief account of its origins and development up to and including the period of its entry into London University under the leadership of the most famous modern historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston. Following on from this, the idea of a distinctive Jesuit intellectual tradition, and more specifically of the Jesuit contribution to philosophy, is explored.

Viewed from the perspective of the nineteenth century there is little in the details of contemporary political life that would seem special. Tensions between great powers, ethnic and religious divisions, trade rivalries, economic recessions, currency crises, civil unrest, etc. are all part of the fabric of the modern world. Social life in the West has been marked by the dissolution of families and communities into voluntary and market associations of individuals; but while that was a distinctive feature of the twentieth century and has extended into the twenty-first, it is a continuation of trends well-established in previous times principally through industrialisation and urbanisation.

One form of scepticism about the possibility of moral theory does not deny that there is something describable as ‘the conduct of life’, but it argues that there is no special ethical account to be given of this since conduct has no identifiably moral dimension. Here I explore the possibility that the problem of identifying distinctively moral aspects of action is explained by the thesis that the moral is ubiquitous; that every human action is – not ‘may be’ – morally significant. To say, however, that morality is all pervasive is not to say anything about how demanding moral considerations may be. Reasons for action ultimately relate to promoting or protecting the human good, and their relative strength and urgency derives from the manner, extent and immediacy of their bearing upon this end and not from belonging to some logically distinct category.

There is a lapidary saying owing to Etienne Gilson, that is often misquoted or adapted – with ‘metaphysics’ taking the place of ‘philosophy’ – and which is invariably reproduced in isolation. It is that ‘Philosophy always buries its undertakers’. Understanding this remark as Gilson intended it is relevant to the issues of the nature of philosophy, and of what conception of it may be most appropriate or fruitful for us to pursue. The question of the mortality or otherwise of philosophy in general, and of metaphysics in particular, is a significant one for ongoing intellectual enquiry, and it is also relevant to the current position of academic philosophy in Great Britain and in the English-speaking world.

When fresh meat, or blood, is boiled the colour changes from the red of oxyhaemoglobin to a dull, brownish colour. The change of colour is due to splitting up of oxyhaemoglobin into coagulated proteid and haematin, which are precipitated. The dark colour of haematin, mixed with the white of coagulated proteid, gives the dull brown. When, however, meat has been salted, it has a characteristic red colour when cooked. It is evident, therefore, either that ordinary haematin is not split off from the oxyhaemoglobin, or that the colour of the haematin is masked by the presence of another pigment.

In almost all investigations relating to ventilation of inhabited buildings determinations of the carbonic acid present in the air are essential. The method in common use is that of Pettenkofer, or some modification of it. This method has, however, the disadvantage that the determinations necessitate the carrying to and from the laboratory of large bottles, and take a considerable time. To overcome these drawbacks several methods capable of being conveniently applied on the spot have been devised, but their accuracy is hardly sufficient for practical purposes, hence they have not come into general use.

By the existing law for Great Britain it is enacted that “in every room in any factory or workshop sufficient means of ventilation shall be provided, and sufficient ventilation shall be maintained.” Not very much has been hitherto ascertained, however, as to the degree of purity actually existing in the air of factories and workshops generally, or as to what standard of purity may reasonably be expected considering the difficulties met with. A Departmental Committee was recently appointed by the Home Secretary to investigate and report upon the subject. The members of the Committee were Mr E. H. Osborn, Engineering Adviser to the Chief Inspector of Factories, and myself, with Mr C. R. Pendock, one of H. M. Inspectors of Factories, as Secretary. The Committee has just reported on the subject of general ventilation1, but reserving for a future Report the vitiation of air by dust, fumes, &c. from special manufacturing processes.

The functional catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT Val108/158Met) polymorphism has been shown to have an impact on tasks of executive function, memory and attention and recently, tasks with an affective component. As oestrogen reduces COMT activity, we focused on the interaction between gender and COMT genotype on brain activations during an affective processing task. We used functional MRI (fMRI) to record brain activations from 74 healthy subjects who engaged in a facial affect recognition task; subjects viewed and identified fearful compared to neutral faces. There was no main effect of the COMT polymorphism, gender or genotype×gender interaction on task performance. We found a significant effect of gender on brain activations in the left amygdala and right temporal pole, where females demonstrated increased activations over males. Within these regions, Val/Val carriers showed greater signal magnitude compared to Met/Met carriers, particularly in females. The COMT Val108/158Met polymorphism impacts on gender-related patterns of activation in limbic and paralimbic regions but the functional significance of any oestrogen-related COMT inhibition appears modest.