Dear Editor, In attempting to shed light on Ireland’s vocation numbers (Letters, IC 3/10/2019), it seems that Canon Paul Ferrer has drawn attention to just how much fog and confusion bedevil this subject. The term ‘pre-seminary’ never appears in the Holy See’s 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis on priestly formation, he says, highlighting how the document identifies propaedeutic formation…
The Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region may seem almost irrelevant to many Irish Catholics: sure, Pope Francis talks often of growth in the Church coming from the peripheries, but there are peripheries and there are peripheries. Austen Ivereigh’s commonwealmagazine.org piece ‘When the Amazon meets the Tiber’ should help banish such scepticism, working well…
A recurring line from the Twilight Zone movie came back to me last week: “You want to see something really scary?” Eugenics: Science’s Greatest Scandal (BBC4) over the last two Thursdays made for very scary viewing. We’re familiar with eugenics, pure race theory and the like from Nazi ideology, but the programmes showed that the seeds…
A History of the Irish Red Cross by Shane Lehane (Four Courts Press, €45.00) Following the estab-lishment of the Red Cross in Geneva in 1863, the British branch was founded in 1870 as the ‘British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War’ and reconstituted as the British Red Cross in…
“I remember when you used to visit the school, and we had such good times and fun there, but I never thought that the future would ever be like this.” I knew what he meant. His mother had just died following an accident – a young woman, with so much left to live and to…
Judy (12A) “If I’m a legend,” Judy Garland said once, “why am I so lonely?” Maybe that was precisely why. “I was born,” she said, “at the age of 12 on the MGM lot.” A tendency towards weight gain caused Louis B. Meyer to put her on a punishing regime of slimming tablets. An addiction…
It’s now 14 months since Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told Pope Francis that the Government felt it was time for a new covenant between Church and State in Ireland. Mr Varadkar hasn’t elaborated since and there is little to point to by way of evidence that he is either minded or capable of fostering a mature…
The appointment of Bishop Michael Duignan to head the Diocese of Clonfert is “hugely significant” as a vote of confidence by Pope Francis in the future of the diocese, worshippers at the new bishop’s ordination Mass have been told. Preaching in St Brendan’s Cathedral, Loughrea, Msgr Cathal Geraghty noted how the initial announcement of Bishop…
One of the first questions posed by those who have not followed the road to sainthood of an individual is: what are the miracles? There must be two recognised miracles attributed to a person who is to be canonised and Cardinal John Henry Newman, recognised as a saint on October 13 at the Vatican, is…
Cardinal Newman – Special Supplement Newman speaks as clearly to us today as to his peers in the 19th Century, writes Bishop Fintan Monahan “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” – John Henry Newman John Henry Newman will be canonised as a new saint of the Catholic…
Greg Daly
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Michael Kelly
Chai Brady