The BBC's Kevin Connolly reports from Texas on how a state which voted Republican again is reacting to a resounding defeat in a battle of ideas.

Having lost the election, Republicans in Texas reflect on the validity of classical free-market thinking in the current economic environment.

How does a modern liberal square their progressive social beliefs with being a member of the Roman Catholic church? Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late US senator Bobby Kennedy, has found an accommodation.

Laurie Taylor, in his weekly column for the Magazine, writes about our complex attitudes towards suicide.

The Vatican has brought up to date the traditional seven deadly sins by adding seven modern mortal sins it claims are becoming prevalent in what it calls an era of "unstoppable globalisation".

BBC listeners and readers describe who or what you could not live without on the African continent.

Leading Roman Catholic theologians have been meeting in Rome to consider whether or not to abolish the idea of limbo . Why? Because it appears to have become too unpopular.

The Monitor is home to quizzes, paper monitor and your letters.

Monday's European papers debate the Pope's visit to Spain and the political future of Poland following the resignation of the country's prime minister.

A Catholic priest says it is a sin for people to keep money they received from faulty cash machines in Belfast.

BBC Europe Editor Mark Mardell on the Conservative Party's plan to form a new power block in the European Parliament, and his continuing adaptation to life in Brussels.

A US judge jails an ex-priest for raping a boy in the 1980s in a scandal which shook the Church in Boston.

A court convicts an ex-priest of raping a boy in the 1980s in a scandal which has shaken the Church in Boston.

The BBC News website look at the variety of European traditions at Christmas and New Year.

Never read Ulysses? Now you don't have to. All you need to know about James Joyce's masterpiece.

It was a decision that could have changed the face of history - the day a disillusioned Margaret Thatcher resolved to leave politics.

After his recent well-documented accident, could it be that Barry Manilow might be about to re-invent himself as a King of Cool?

A leading US Catholic theologian says a US war on Iraq is a just war according to Catholic teachings, but others remain unconvinced.

The seemingly pro-Israeli policy of every adminstration since Harry Truman derives - not from the strength of the Jewish vote - but from Truman's fears that, once Palestine ceased to be a British mandate, the Arabs would overwhelm and conquer the whole land of Judea

Barrister John Duddington, of the Christian Law Review, gives a personal view of the Pope's call for Catholic lawyers to boycott divorce cases.