Dear Editor, I was amazed to read your front page story last week, declaring that ‘Divorced/remarried Catholics can now receive Communion’ (IC 15/09/2016). The story below the headline was scarcely less amazing. I appreciate that the circumstances under which the Argentine bishops envisage allowing some Catholics who have civilly remarried followed civil divorces to receive…
Courtney McGrail
Newspapers allege Vatican plot to infiltrate Muslim world
Newspapers in Turkey have claimed that the exiled Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen is “a Trojan horse of the Vatican” in a conspiracy to spread Christianity across the region. Already demonised in the country as the main figure behind the failed July coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the US-based cleric has now become the subject…
US Church condemns ‘deceptive Catholic abortion’ ad
New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has led Church voices in condemning an advertisement campaign which declares that “public funding for abortion is a Catholic social justice value”. Reacting to the advertisement, backed by a group called Catholics for Choice and running in newspapers across America, Cardinal Dolan said it was “deceptive”. Stressing that Catholics for…
Auschwitz was not ‘in Poland’
Dear Editor, In an article on the visit of the relics of St Maximilian Kolbe to Ireland (IC 15/09/2016) you state that “the relic of the saint who was martyred to save the life of another prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland will be in Ireland for the first time in October”. I would…
Living off our Christian capital
“The Bible is the first text to represent victimisation from the standpoint of the victim, and it is this representation which is responsible, ultimately, for our own superior sensibility to violence,” according to the late French philosopher-anthropologist René Girard, observing with reference to some of the Bible’s more violent passages that, “it is for biblical…
The miracle of life
Pope Francis holds a baby during a September 16 visit to the neonatal unit at Rome’s San Giovanni Hospital. Photo: CNS
Vatican Roundup
Fr Jacques Hamel ‘a martyr’ – Pope Pope Francis has hailed Fr Jacques Hamel, as “a martyr” during a Mass for the murdered French priest. Referring to the wider suffering of Christian communities in various parts of the world, the Pope said: “Today there are Christians murdered, tortured, imprisoned, and slaughtered because they do not deny Jesus Christ. In this history,…
Headline ‘inaccurate’
Dear Editor, Your front page headline ‘Divorced/remarried Catholics can now receive Communion’ (IC 15/09/2016) is inaccurate and gravely irresponsible. A (leaked) private papal letter cannot overturn the Magisterium of 2,000 years and the words of Jesus Christ himself (Mt 5; 31-32, Mt 7:6, Mt 19:2-12, Mk 10:2-12; Lk 16:18). It is also uncharitable and unmerciful…
New light on the first industrial schools
The committal of two Mallow children to an Industrial school in 1893 by Martin McCarthy (Four Courts Press, €9.95)
US Archbishop laments ‘flawed presidential candidates’
One of America’s most prominent prelates has voiced his strong concern at the quality of candidates standing in the 2016 presidential election. In a scathing assessment of the campaign to date, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia said he had not previously known a year in which the contending political parties had “at the same…