Dear Editor, this is a letter to Maria Steen. Firstly I am deeply disappointed that you are not on the list of candidates for President of Ireland. To have missed a nomination by a mere two signatures makes it heartbreaking for you as it was for those of us who had pinned our hopes on…
I bet you never noticed Catholic statues of saints in hospitals or other public places in Ireland. We used to take them for granted, until they became invisible. But consider how difficult it could be for a militant atheist (or a humanist) to live in a society surrounded by so many symbols of religion. Where…
Hannah Arendt’s warning of the ‘banality of evil’ reveals how the routinisation of abortion masks its human cost In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious architects of the Nazi Holocaust, was tried in Jerusalem. The German intellectual, Hannah Arendt, went to Jerusalem to report on the trial. While the world expected to…
We need the love of others in this world to help us bridge the chasm, writes Penelope Middelboe An elderly aunt, Joan, whom I knew very well, died recently from old age. She was 91. Her sudden death after a decent lunch, whilst being helped into bed for a rest by her carers, took us…
John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) doesn’t only swear in I Swear (12A). He also spits, twitches, hits people, breaks things and spouts racist and sexist slogans. And yet he’s one of the gentlest people you could meet. What’s going on? It’s Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition people were almost totally ignorant about when John first started experiencing…
Q: My husband and I got a divorce because my husband had an affair. Why doesn’t the Church agree with me that it was his fault and grant my annulment? Why is my Church siding with him? A: I’m very sorry you went through such a painful experience. But with respect to your specific question, I…
In the movie The English Patient there’s a very heartwarming scene. A number of people from various countries are thrown together by circumstance in an abandoned villa in post-war Italy. Among them are a young nurse, attending to an English pilot who’s been badly burned in an air crash, and a young Asian man whose…
Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well Luke 17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. Luke 17:12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, Luke 17:13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on…
A week is a long time in politics’ says the familiar cliché and wow it was certainly one of those weeks. The week started with the first of the Presidential debates on Virgin Media, on the Tonight Show. It was on a spectrum between dull and lacklustre – all task forces (Gavin), military industrial complexes…
In these years of self-publishing many books reach a literary editor’s desk which would be of great interest to a limited audience, which have little appeal for a general publisher. Anything sent into The Irish Catholic will be considered for review; though the Books Editor cannot enter into correspondence about why a title might be turned away.…
Aubrey Malone
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello