“…one single issue should be reviewed seriously, I believe. And that is the ban on contraception”, writes Mary Kenny The former abbot of Glenstal, Fr Mark Patrick Hederman, has suggested that the Church’s teachings on sexuality need to be dramatically modernised, and he has provided a list for this agenda including celibacy and the subjugation…

Expect the Government’s Church-bashing to continue for some time, writes David Quinn Unless there is a pushback from unexpected quarters, last Friday was the last Good Friday when pubs across the nation will close. It appears the vintners have had their way because the Government has cleared the path to the pubs opening each Good…

The heart has its reasons, says Pascal, and sometimes those reasons have a long history. Recently I signed a card for a friend, a devout Baptist, who was raised to have a suspicion of Roman Catholics. It’s something he still struggles with; but, don’t we all! History eventually infects our DNA. Who of us is…

Fr Vincent Sherlock It’s good, I suppose, to be on the back page of a newspaper without being in the obituary or ‘items for sale’ sections! There’s a lot of talk about ‘low morale’ these days. It may well be across the board, but quite often this crops up at diocesan gatherings of priests or…

Believers and non-believers alike have been arguing about the Resurrection since the day Jesus rose. What really happened? How was he raised from the dead? Did an actual dead body really come back to life and step out of the grave or was the Resurrection a monumental life-changing event inside the consciousness of Jesus’ followers?…

Fr Conor McDonough OP Among the books on my shelves, one of my favourites is Ernest Klein’s two-volume Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. It doesn’t offer definitions of words, but shows their roots in other languages and periods. So the entry for the word ‘diamond’ traces it back to a Middle English word which…

“We’ve become so used to Catholicism being the dominant culture, it no longer is”, writes Michael Kelly We’ve been talking about crisis in the Church in Ireland for so long it runs the risk of becoming a vicious circle of negativity. Paradoxically, the need to face up to the piercing urgency of Church reform and…

“the male-dominated structure of the Church makes Catholicism seem old-fashioned and behind the times”, writes Mary Kenny In response to the latest census information – showing that just over 78% of people in the Irish Republic now describe themselves as Catholic (down from 84%), there have been calls to involve more women in the Church’s…

There has been a great deal of coverage about the undoubtedly significant fact that the number of people living in Ireland who say they belong to no religion has soared in the five years from Census 2011 to Census 2016. These ‘nones’ as they are called (because they mark the box marked ‘none’ in the…

Religion would be a second-class subject if new proposals take effect, writes Fr Eamonn Conway The latest proposal from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) will make it very difficult for patrons and boards of management of Catholic primary schools to fulfill their legal and statutory obligation to uphold their schools’ ethos. The…