As a newspaper, we report fair and accurately without fear or favour, writes Michael Kelly Former president Mary McAleese has been at pains to deny that she misrepresented the views of Pope John Paul II on human sexuality. It’s a serious matter that requires a serious response. When The Irish Catholic first broke the story last week…
The clerical church is dying, says Fr Brian D’Arcy, now marking 50 years as an ordained priest, “and it’s not such a tragedy.” The celibate priesthood is over: the male priesthood is over. This is “a gift of the Holy Spirit” and out of such a transformation can come new seeds of life. Well, he’s…
The View There has been much discussion of misogyny in the Church following Mary McAleese’s most recent assertion that the Church has become a “primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny”, and “a male bastion of patronising platitudes to which Pope Francis has added his own quota”. She had previously described the Catholic…
The establishment never misses opportunity to demonise the nuns and to blacken their reputations, writes David Quinn Dr Peter Boylan, one of the chief campaigners in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment, has been on the warpath again over the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital from Holles Street to the Blackrock Campus of St…
The SDLP, who saw themselves as the moral voice of many Northern Catholics, now inhabit the same political space as their erstwhile competitors, writes Pól Ó Muirí By the standards of Catholic bishops in the North, the statement was robust. Issued at the end of October in response to the introduction of new laws…
We should save money and just let Micheál Martin vote 44 times on each Dáil vote, writes John McGuirk Watching the House of Commons in recent weeks, at the height of Brexitmania, probably the most unfamiliar part of it to those of us who observe Irish politics was the way in which the result…
Questions of Faith Now more than ever, people are freely opting for a plant-based lifestyle not only to improve their health but also for moral reasons. It’s estimated that about 11% of the global population is vegetarian and this number is increasing daily given society’s changing attitudes towards meat consumption. For Catholics who are considering…
Letter from Rome After Tuesday’s deadline for South Sudan to implement a peace agreement was again postponed, the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC), which unites representatives from all major Christian denominations in the country, including the Catholic Church, urged people not to lose hope. One global figure obviously cheering for a happy outcome is…
Nick Mayrand While US Catholics currently claim 13 official American saints, experts at Marquette University’s Raynor Memorial Libraries are doing their part to aid efforts to determine whether that number may soon grow to include Dorothy Day. Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in New York city in the 1930s following her conversion to Catholicism.…
What does it mean to have a vocation? The term gets batted around both in religious and secular circles and everyone assumes its meaning is clear. Is it? What’s a vocation? Karl Jung defined it this way: “A vocation is an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn
Colm Fitzpatrick
Fr Ronald Rolheiser