Organisers of next year’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin – which Pope Francis is expected to attend – will be buoyed up by new research that reveals that Irish people remain among the most religious in Europe. Despite a fall-off in church attendance, more than one in three Irish Catholics still attend Mass weekly…
The prospect of having married priests is looking more likely, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has said, following the Pope having given permission for the issue to be discussed at a synod of bishops. Commenting on reports that the possibility of married men being ordained to the priesthood would be on the agenda of…
The publishing wing of the Church in Ireland – has returned to profitability after some turbulent years, according to latest figures filed with the Companies Registration Office. Veritas, the Irish bishops’ publishing arm, has been struggling for years, battling with an uncertain retail climate, but 2016 saw the company making a small net profit of…
Veritas is finally profitable again, but that’s no reason to rest easy, writes Greg Daly It’s taken a long time, but Ireland’s biggest religious publishing and retail company has finally – and tentatively – returned to profitability. Veritas, the Irish bishops’ publishing arm, has been struggling for years, battling with an uncertain retail climate…
Mission has come ‘full circle’ An influx of new religious communities has been hailed as offering new life to the Irish Church, and bringing Ireland’s missionary heritage back home. Over the past year at least four groups of religious women have set up in Ireland from abroad, the most recent being a community of…
‘Intentional’ Catholic education is the future for Faith schools in Ireland, Greg Daly writes “Religion,” Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin said at last week’s The Irish Catholic Education Conference, is “not an added extra to be fitted in during break time or twilight hours or during registration”. Far from being something extra bolted on to…
Religious instruction in Church-owned schools remains the business of school patrons, the Minister for Education has clarified. Responding to a written request from Ruth Coppinger TD, Richard Bruton reiterated that denominational schools are currently required to allocate 30 minutes per day for religious instruction, but said that unlike other subject areas, the content of schools’…
Northern Ireland should consider employing a commission of specialists to run the region when the power-sharing executives cannot be established, a prominent Methodist minister has suggested. “Another election will not produce anything different – it will just produce the same people with the same issues,” Rev. Harold Good told The Irish Catholic as talks to…
It’s a common observation among informed Christians – regardless of their branch of the Christian family – that when it comes to covering religion, the mass media is embarrassingly out of its depth. Genuine mastery of the subject is rare, which is one reason why John Allen being hired by The Boston Globe in 2014…
If ever there was a precise date we can point to and say that it changed the world, October 31, 2017 would surely be a contender. Then it was that the young German professor, the Augustinian friar Martin Luther, gave notice of an academic debate around 95 ‘theses’, signalling the beginning of what we now…