Dear Editor, In this digital age where so many of us have a closer relationship with our allegedly ‘smart’ phones and less with our creator, might I respectfully suggest that the better accessory to which we should become attached is a set of rosary beads. Granted, such rosarys lack technology but neither will they run…
Courtney McGrail
Good things come in small packages
Dear Editor, There was a major statistical error in Mary Kenny’s piece on the rise of strictly Orthodox Jews in Britain (IC 22/10/2015). The UK Jewish community is just under 0.5% of the total population not the 5% she quoted. This amounts to a community of just under 300,000 out of a total UK population…
World News in Brief
Cleric imprisoned by communists dies Slovak Cardinal Jan Chryzostom Korec, the retired bishop of Nitra who was secretly ordained a priest and bishop and spent more than a dozen years in a communist prison, died at the weekend at the age of 91. In a condolence message to the president of the Slovakian bishops’ conference, Pope Francis said Cardinal…
World’s bishops issue climate change appeal
Church leaders representing five continents have appealed to climate negotiators to approve a “transformative” and fair, legally-binding agreement that sets global temperature limits and decarbonisation goals to save the planet from climate-induced catastrophe. The representatives of bishops’ conferences from around the globe signed the appeal in a renewed push to encourage climate negotiators meeting in…
US votes to defund Planned Parenthood over abortion scandal
US lawmakers have voted to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which has been caught selling aborted babies and their body parts. The Republican-dominated House of Representatives passed a bill to defund the controversial organisation after the scandal emerged. “Women have the most to gain from congressional action to reroute these tax dollars to community…
Knock shrine hosts Joy of the Gospel workshop
Theologian, lecturer and author, Fr Brian Grogan SJ, is leading a workshop on The Joy of the Gospel at Knock Shrine next month. Taking place on November 28, the workshop will explore Pope Francis’ call to us in his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, a document which addresses topics such as evangelisation in the…
A world of resources we should know about on the ‘sixth continent’
“Hell hath no fury like a Catholic scorned on Twitter,” as someone once remarked, and there’s no getting away from the fact that the Catholic internet can sometimes seem like a strange and overheated place. It’s perhaps not surprising that it can become unbearable when collective discernment exercises like the synod cause excitable commentators to…
A lament for a Greece in turmoil
Greece Through Irish Eyes by Richard Pine (Liffey Press, €22.95)
St Teresa of Avila’s way to God
St Teresa and the Our Father: A Catechism of Prayer Aloysius Rego OCD (Teresian Press, £6.00)
Ambushes, close escapes and the ‘execution of spies’
“The men will talk to me”: West Cork interviews by Ernie O’Malley ed. Andy Bielenberg, John Borgonovo and Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc (Mercier Press, €16.99)