麻豆约拍

William Crawley with the religious and ethical news of the week. Moral arguments and perspectives on stories familiar and unfamiliar.

The murder of Constable Ronan Kerr has brought Church and community together in an unprecedented way this week in Northern Ireland. Ireland Correspondent Andrew Martin will talk to William Crawley about the hope that has come from tragedy.

A new survey by a Jewish charity has identified increasing levels of child poverty - particularly within the ultra-orthodox Haredi community. William talks to the author Jonathan Boyd.

In the second of four audio postcards from Westminster Abbey, Quentin Letts looks at the often troubled relationship between the Abbey and Parliament.

As the EU consider a law that would require kosher meat to be labelled in a way that shows how the animal was killed, we debate the issue with an MEP and the Jewish group who say it is the equivalent of putting a yellow star on the package.

What's in a name? Quite a lot, according to the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who has joined the campaign to stop his local pub being renamed. He tells William the story behind "The Cardinal" pub and also how it ties into Catholic social teaching today.

Science and religion are often seen as polar opposites, but this weekend a major conference in Cambridge is celebrating the Belgian Catholic priest who came up with Big Bang theory. William talks to former Templeton Prize winner Rev Dr John Polkinghorne about the conference, and also what he thinks of this week's decision to award the prize to an atheist.

Is the Catholic church still ignoring official guidelines about defrocking priests who are convicted of child abuse? Kevin Bocquet returns to Salford to investigate these claims.

Finally, what can we learn from the case of Nan Maitland, the 84-year-old woman who ended her life in Switzerland this week because she didn't want to die of old age? William looks at the ethics of assisted dying with Dr Michael Irwin from the Society of Old Age Rational Suicide and the Bishop of Swindon Rt Rev Dr Lee Rayfield.

E-mail: sunday@bbc.co.uk

Series producer: Amanda Hancox.

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