I'm back in Australia after two months in Europe, including Ireland. I find it difficult to overestimate the rate and depth of change I witnessed and the collapse of a phase of the Church's life that is currently underway. Throughout the world, but particularly in Ireland, the sense of the end of an era that…
Month: November 2013
A critque of imperialism
Peter CostelloIrish involvement with Africa is all too often seen though the work of missionaries, especially in Nigeria and Kenya. But this reissue of a book by the late Wicklow novelist Gerald Hanley, better known for The Year of the Lion and Gilligan’s Last Elephant, deals with a very different area and very different kind of…
Perspectives on Parnell
Parnell Reconsidered, edited by Pauric Travers and Donal McCartney (UCD Press, €28.00 / £24.00)
Four days that changed the world
Parkland (12A) For many people, John F. Kennedy’s assassination 50 years ago was a kind of pre-9/11 experience, an iconic moment. The famous question, “Where were you when JFK was shot?” subsequently became associated with other figures like Elvis and Princess Diana etc., but he was the first. The four dark days of his death…
Searching for a word filled with reality
The right word makes the Word become flesh, writes Fr Ronald Rolheiser
There is a biblical tradition of relics
Dear Editor, Margaret Ahearne, (IC 7/11/13) is grossly in error when she states that the use and veneration of the relics of the saints is unbiblical and unchristian. Far from it. There are several biblical references, both in the Old and New Testaments, from which the Catholic Church derives this practice and Christians from antiquity…
Kurtz the choice for pragmatic prelates
Paul KeenanThe US bishops have made shrewd choices in their new leadership, writes Paul Keenan
A place of sad pilgrimage
How can we represent human madness? It is not an easy question to answer but there are some places in the world which can give an answer. Auschwitz and Birkenau for example, the most-notorious Nazi concentration camps saw one of the greatest tragedies in human history. Two places where you can find terror in the…
Abuse report scathing of Victoria Church
The parliamentary inquiry into the mishandling of abuse by the Catholic Church in the Australian state of Victoria has issued a report scathing of the local Church. Betrayal of Trust, the final report of the cross-party inquiry, launched in 2012, covers incidents of abuse by clergy from 1960 to 1985 and details what inquiry chairwoman…
SSPX protestors disrupt cathedral service
Argentina – Members of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) have disrupted an interfaith service commemorating the Holocaust in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires. As members of the Catholic and Jewish faiths joined in a ceremony to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht when Hitler unleashed his Nazi followers on Germany’s synagogues and Jewish…