The story of the workers in the vineyard is a powerful parable, and one especially apposite in these times when Pope Francis is trying to build on St John Paul’s efforts to draw back into the Church’s flock those stray sheep and lambs the Pope is tasked with tending and feeding. ‘Cradle Catholics’ and those…
More than a year on from the Brexit referendum, we’re still in unchartable waters, according to Down and Connor’s Bishop Noel Treanor, who hopes that the crash-course in global and European realities Britain has been receiving since the vote is not coming too late. Across the rest of Europe, though, “the mood seems to have…
EXCLUSIVE A ‘hard border’ across Ireland is “unthinkable” and could be devastating for the North, Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Treanor has warned. “A hard border is really inconceivable and no longer viable and would be detrimental in so many different levels and arenas of life,” Dr Treanor told The Irish Catholic, highlighting the needs…
Bishop Denis Nulty has described the first ever diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes from Kildare and Leighlin as a “huge experience” after 1,300 people from every parish in the diocese visited the French Marian shrine. Describing how he “enjoyed every bit” of the pilgrimage, Dr Nulty had nothing but praise for the “vast crowd” that had…
The new owners of a former seminary, sold earlier this year for over €16 million, are likely to face serious restrictions in developing the site, The Irish Catholic understands. St Mary’s Carmelite Seminary, off Donnybrook’s Bloomfield Avenue, was placed on the open market last October, with joint agents GVA Donal Ó Buachalla and WK Nolan…
The Government should consider taxing the owners of needlessly empty houses in an attempt to increase housing supply in the capital, a leading homelessness campaigner has said. Commenting on reports that hundreds of properties are lying vacant around the city, Mike Allen of Focus Ireland told The Irish Catholic that efforts should be made to…
It’s been a strange month for online Catholic news. July 1 saw Pope Francis informing Cardinal Gerhard Müller that he would not be renewing his tenure as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s doctrinal watchdog. Readers may recall his public disagreement with Irish child protection advocate Marie Collins in…
One of the Pope’s closest advisers on the family has insisted that when dealing with marital breakdown, the Church must put the needs of children ahead of a simplistic application of rules. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn told The Irish Catholic that in the past the Church too often focused on sexual sins to the detriment of…
Ireland’s longest-serving diocesan bishop has raised the question of whether it is time to separate the religious and civil aspects of Irish weddings. Speaking at a Limerick conference, Clonfert’s Bishop John Kirby told Austria’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn how “in Ireland there’s a very close link between civil marriage and Church marriage”, and asked whether the…
Comments by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at a conference in Germany are helpful neither to Irish Catholics nor to relations between Church and State in Ireland, a leading academic has said. Describing as “distorted” the archbishop’s assessment of the origins of the distinctly Catholic character of independent Ireland and the reluctance within the Church to hand…