Fr Gerry O’Hanlon Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice Describing Dr Martin’s Würzburg lecture as “a perceptive commentary on the situation in Ireland”, Fr O’Hanlon said that Pope Francis’ vision of a collegial or synodal Church seems the way forward in Ireland as much as the world at large. “I think it will be interesting…

Understanding the religious culture of Ireland and its political impact today is not an easy task. It is not an easy task for those of us who were born and live in Ireland; it is not easy for people living in a different cultural background. I wish to reflect on changes in Irish religious culture today, changes…

The mark of genuine contrition is not a sense of guilt, but a sense of sorrow, of regret for having taken a wrong turn; just as the mark of living in grace is not a sense of our own worth but a sense of being accepted and loved despite our unworthiness. We are spiritually healthy…

I was in the United States this past week where I was attending the ‘Convocation of Catholic Leaders’ on the theme of ‘the joy of the Gospel in America’. Five years in planning, the meeting brought together 3,500 delegates from various US dioceses and Catholic organisations to chart the future direction of the Church in…

By the time you read this, Charlie Gard, a baby born almost one year ago, may already be dead. Charlie was born with an extremely rare condition that causes progressive muscle weakness, including of the heart, and brain damage. He has been on life-support for months and at the time of writing his medical team…

Sometimes while praying the Psalms, I’m caught looking quite uncomfortably into a mirror reflecting back to me my own seeming dishonesty. For example, we pray these words in the Psalms: “My soul longs for you in the night. …like a deer that yearns for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you my God. …for…

Fr Bernard Cotter Why is it that undertakers are nearly always thanked for their ‘professionalism’ while clergy are never praised in this way? I’m referring to those acknowledgement notices placed in newspapers some time after a funeral, which contain a kind of general ‘thank you’ to everyone who helped, but which usually name people whose…

Freud famously said that “anatomy is destiny” – perhaps challenged, now, in our transgender era – but for nations, geography surely can be destiny. Italy currently feels this acutely, as it bears the brunt of the great numbers of migrants brought to its shores. The number crossing the Med, mainly from Libya, is currently at…

Des Hanafin will have been an extremely familiar figure to many of the readers of this newspaper down the years. He was a long-serving Fianna Fáil Senator and a founder and the long-time Chairman of the Pro-Life Campaign. Des died last week, aged 85. He had been unwell for a long time but was still…

While it’s probably too much to say that Pope Francis has an explicit ‘Swedish strategy’, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Sweden has both a place in the Argentine Pope’s heart and a role to play in his vision of a ‘Church of the Peripheries’. In some ways, the plates had already been shifting in the…