Dear Editor, In her article of October 6, ‘My alternative suggestions for saving the planet’, Mary Kenny praises fur coats, though creatures suffer misery for these coats. Pope Francis says “nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image… justifies absolute domination over other creatures” (Laudato Si’ 67).  Male chicks…

Dear Editor, The extracts from Fr Columbus Murphy’s personal account of the 1916 Rising (‘Mercy amongst the mayhem’, IC 20/10/2016) were absolutely enthralling, and a fine counterpart to the similar piece drawn from his fellow Capuchin Fr Aloysius Travers’ somewhat later account that you published last year in your 1916 special. At this point, as…

Dear Editor, Over the last month several Irish Catholic clergy have expressed in public opinions on abortion that are clearly at odds with the teaching of the Church. Last month Fr Brian D’Arcy of the Passionist order was reported as saying that in counselling women on the subject of pregnancy he always took the view…

Dear Editor, I was amazed to read Gerard Gallagher in your ‘Notebook’ section (IC 13/10/2016) say that commentators have described Ireland’s young Catholics as “over-catechised and under-evangelised”. Any commentator who truly believes that could usefully spend half an hour in the company of Catholics in their teens, twenties, or even thirties and forties: one thing…

Dear Editor, What are we going to do about the huge gulf that exists between the more erudite members of the Church and the ordinary people who are not being taught to meet Jesus Christ in the world of today? The teaching Church in the Vatican seems to have become an increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy. Words…