Dear Editor, I was delighted to read that Minister Frances Fitzgerald will not be lifting the ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday (IC 30/03/2017). Every year publicans bring up this issue as if it is some kind of religious persecution to deny them one day’s profit in a country that has a…
Iraqi Christians driven from the Nineven Plains by the so-called Islamic State are looking forward to moving home, with Church leaders having assembled a taskforce to spearhead a vast rebuilding programme. The Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, formed from bishops from the Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean Catholic Churches, will oversee the planning and rebuilding of…
Fr. Bernard Healy Last week Fr Tony Flannery attracted the attention of The Irish Times with a blogpost entitled ‘How Much of Church Doctrine do we Really Believe?’ The Church’s credibility problem in Ireland, he argues, rests on something deeper than recent scandals. He argues that “[s]ome of the very basic doctrines of the Church no longer…
Albania is a regional Church that Archbishop Brown gets to sculpt When it was announced that our Papal Nuncio was being dispatched to Albania, there was shock that firstly the nuncio was leaving after only five years and secondly, Albania! Some in Church circles saw Machiavellian motivations behind the appointment by the Vatican. There is…
Pope Francis has approved the recognition of a miracle attributed to the intercession of two of the shepherd children who saw Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, thus paving the way for their canonisation. Pope Francis signed the decree for the causes of Blesseds Francisco and Jacinta Marto during a meeting March 23 with Cardinal…
While documentation regarding an alleged miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Oscar Romero is being studied at the Vatican, there is no date scheduled for his canonisation, the archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, said. “I must say, in all sincerity, that there is no date. And we understand it well because it involves…
Dear Editor, Thank you so much for your article ‘Children of the Famine’ (IC 23/03/2017) about the mindset that sustained the networks of social control independent Ireland inherited and developed from the British. Too often commentators act as though our clergy and religious were Vatican shock troops parachuted into Ireland, despite these supposed agents of…
Michele Howe Aging is difficult and caring for our elders is a skill many people are never taught, writes Michele Howe In all honesty, the first time our family was suddenly made responsible for caring for someone we loved, we didn’t do a very good job. We did, however, learn a lot. Some years later,…
Lucy Wolfe I am a sleep consultant and mum of four children. I work with families and children from birth to six years of age to establish positive sleep associations in the early days and to address frustrating sleep problems from six months onwards – without leaving a child alone to cry. First of all,…
Stations of the Cross Then and Now by Denis McBride (Redemptorist Publications, £15.00) As Easter approaches Denis McBride’s new book is perhaps the sort of contemplative book which many Christians will want to read, in which the Via Dolorosa is explored and exemplified in modern terms, though it would be true to say that the…