Deacon Dominic Cerrato The issue of admitting women to the diaconate has been, over the past decade, a subject of intense theological debate. In a recent interview with CBS News, Pope Francis unequivocally stated that women cannot be ordained as deacons. This stance, delivered during a ‘60 Minutes’ interview, has significant implications for ongoing discussions…
Charlie Camosy Every convert’s path to the Catholic faith is unique, and some come to the Church through more winding paths than others. Jeffrey L. Morrow, currently a professor of theology at Seton Hall University’s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology (ICSST), recently spoke about his journey from Judaism to Christianity to Catholicism and what…
Emily Zanotti There is little needed to set fire to the world of online Catholics -and the recent commencement speech from Kansas City Chiefs kicker, Harrison Butker to an audience of Benedictine College graduates seemed to riddle Catholic social media with fractures, as traditionalists and liberals, Catholics and non-Catholics, and even men and women came…
Teresa Pitt Green My work with clergy is a long way from the old days. Then, when I spotted a Roman collar on a random passerby mixed in the throng of a Manhattan Avenue, I would crumble into the nearest doorway with a mix of anxiety and grief known as ‘beginning to remember’. Now, I…
Elizabeth Scalia We all have them, those desperate times, particularly in the wee small hours of the morning, when illness or anxiety pulls us up from our beds and down to our knees, or keeps us on our feet, pacing the floor as we seek relief from physical or mental or spiritual aches and ailments.…
Letter from India John Dayal India’s Narendra Modi seems to have decided that he can win a third five-year term as prime minister only through campaign rhetoric targeting the Muslim religious minority as a threat not just to national security, but to the 80% Hindu majority among the country’s 1.40 billion people. Muslims, in the…
Khalifa Muhammad Sanusi II The OLA (Our Lady of the Apostles) sisters in Cork, Ireland, established my alma mater – St Anne’s Primary School, Kakuri, Kaduna. They also founded the Queen of Apostles College – now Queen Amina College – and St Gerard’s hospital among others all in Kaduna. I have been planning to visit…
James Garavan We often hear priests speak about how the Church ought to accommodate the ever-diminishing young Catholic population. Today I sat down with two young Catholics, Conor and Isabelle to discuss life as a young Catholic and how they think, as a young person, Irish parishes and schools are failing to support the youth.…
Teresa Pitt Green Most Catholics experience the crisis of sexual abuse by clergy in relation to headlines, as stories from around the globe or from the local parish where a trusted priest has been removed. Yet the pain of abuse within the church bleeds somewhere else, in someone else’s wounds, which are the only place…
Spike Island: The Rebels, Residents and Crafty Criminals of Ireland’s Historic Island by John Crotty (Merrion Press, €18.00 / £14.99) Thomas McCarthy On a bright summer’s morning there is nothing quite as magical as the watery approach to Spike Island from its old naval supply-base of Cobh. John Crotty, Waterford-man, has been the latest keeper of…