I don’t imagine that the elections for the Seanad will deliver as much sound and fury as the General Election for the Dail. Quite rightly too – the Upper House is a secondary chamber which doesn’t govern the country. But it still seems to me to be important, and to bring another dimension to the…

The View I spent some time recently with a group of very fine priests reflecting on their vocations and on their work as priests, work which is centred on sustaining ordinary people like me and you, sometimes in profoundly difficult circumstances, nourishing us and helping us on our journey home to the Lord who made…

Amazonian exhortation points towards Pope’s real aim, writes David Quinn   When Humanae Vitae was issued in 1968 by Pope Paul VI, it was greeted with dismay and anger by many people, including practicing Catholics, who expected the Church to relax its previous prohibition against the use of artificial means of birth control by Catholics.…

Seán
 Cassin   The Irish Embassy in Hanoi has an incisive and challenging comment on its website about Vietnam’s economy. It reads “high rates of malnutrition are often masked by impressive economic development. In Vietnam, stunting still affects almost one in four children, and among ethnic minority groups this reaches almost 40%.” I read on…

A few years ago I was invited by Fr Seán Deegan, a Kiltegan priest, to conduct workshops in the Diocese of Juina in the Mato Grosso, Brazil.  This Amazonian diocese has 140,000 Catholics scattered over a region one and a half times the size of Ireland. It has 19 priests, some of whom are on loan.…

Catholics may feel a sense of déjà vu upon reading Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis’ 16,000-word apostolic exhortation concluding the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon. The topic has been the object of speculation and fevered expectations ever since the gathering of prelates that occasioned it concluded last October in Rome. During the summit, debate over the viri…

Matt Sedensky Seminarians walk along a hallway lined with photos of priests in classes who came before them. Some are pious alumni, who have become their teachers and mentors; others climbed the Catholic hierarchy to be become bishops and cardinals. But there are others: Raymond Leneweaver, Class of 1962, subject of at least 14 victims’…

Jay Niles “Jesus, I trust in you. I could score a touchdown or break a leg and never play again. So whatever is supposed to happen on this play, just let it happen.” These are the words of Hale Hentges, a tight end for American football side Washington Redskins, who goes into every NFL game…

We are growing ever more distrustful of words. Everywhere we hear people say: “That’s just talk! That’s nothing but empty words!” Empty words are all around us. Our world is full of lies, of false promises, of glittering advertising that doesn’t deliver, of words never backed up by anything. We trust less and less in…

Notebook Fr Bernard Healy   If I were to say Carnevale to you, you might think of the masked celebrations of Venice or the samba-dancing of Rio de Janeiro. However, there was once a time when Rome was also famous for its Carnevale, the festival bidding a farewell to meat before the Lenten fast. Rome’s…