Chai Brady and Brandon Scott The riots that convulsed Dublin’s inner-city last week are a symptom of a wider “social discontent” particularly over inadequate housing and the inability to access even basic things, priests in the heart of the capital have warned. After the stabbing of three children and a carer on Parnell Square…
It is an iron law of nature that any species which fails to reproduce is doomed to extinction. The same goes for nations, and whole civilisations. Western civilisation is now several decades into a downward spiral of declining birth rates, and its future is profoundly uncertain. For a modern society to maintain a stable population,…
Learning how to thank God is not only spiritually fruitful but necessary, writes Bill Dodds Most of us were toddlers when we learned to say “please” and “thank you”. We were a little older when we fell into the habit of asking, begging, nagging, whining, “Please, please, please, please, ple-e-e-e-e-e-ease!” Older still when we began…
Deacon Dominic Cerrato In recent years, the Catholic Church in Germany embarked on an ambitious and controversial project known as the “German Synodal Way”. This initiative, which sought to address various issues within the Church, including governance, the role of women, and the Church’s teaching on sexuality, has stirred significant attention and debate within…
Award-winning actor Antonio Banderas (63), who has enjoyed an illustrious 41-year career, said that playing the evil King Herod in the nativity musical Journey to Bethlehem not only allowed him to explore a notoriously dark biblical figure but reminded him of the heartbeat of Christianity: love. Based on his experience with Journey to Bethlehem, the actor said he’s…
Despite frequent calls for a return of Christian imagery and symbolism to Irish politics, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s recent use of scriptural allusion to welcome the release of Irish-Israeli Emily Hand, 9, from Gaza has gone over poorly at home and abroad. In a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) that has been seen over 46…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP It felt like there was a seismic shift in Church teaching concerning transgenderism in recent weeks. And that’s because so many headlines got the story wrong. The New York Times, for example, reported: “Pope Francis, who has made reaching out to LGBTQ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy, has made clear…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: When I was a kid we put up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and took it down a day or two after Christmas. As an adult, I put the tree up a day or two after Thanksgiving and left it up until January 2nd. Now as a Catholic, what…
Bishop Robert Barron has said that he is in “frank disagreement” with the final report of the Synod on Synodality’s claim that advances in the sciences require an evolution in the Church’s moral teaching on human sexuality. In a recently published reflection, the US bishop of Winona–Rochester, Minnesota, said it is “troubling” to see how members…
Ngala Killian Chimtom A leading bishop in the Republic of the Congo has warned that an exponential rise in Christian Pentecostalism in the country is posing a stiff challenge to the Catholic Church, drawing people away amid what he described as “guerilla warfare” in the spiritual realm. “They disrupt the faith of Catholics by…