What happened to former Garda Majella Moynihan – pressurised into yielding her baby son for adoption, back in the 1980s, after she became pregnant out of wedlock – is distressing and upsetting. And it’s certainly unjust that women were stigmatised when this happened while the fathers were seldom held responsible for a pregnancy they had…

In recent years, Mary Immaculate College students have volunteered at a school for children with special needs in Siliguri, India. It is a small operation run by religious sisters and struggles to survive. Just across the road is a highly-resourced fee-paying boarding school. Over the entrance is a giant crest containing a cross, an image…

Some years ago, a dedicated, active, hardworking, popular priest who ran marathons for the hospice in his spare time, found himself experiencing something he had not anticipated, and did not recognise.  He described those days as a time of “crisis in my ministry…my work was consuming me. I was too busy. Self-care and time off…

Talk is cheap when it comes to environmental piety, writes David Quinn   Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl who has risen to prominence lately by warning us of an impending environmental apocalypse if we do not immediately make drastic changes to the way we live. Thunberg was the initiator of the first school…

Letter from Rome Inés San Martín   When the bishops from the Amazon region gather in Rome next October, they will discuss the ordination of “elderly people”, preferably indigenous, to guarantee that the remote communities in the region have access to the sacraments. “Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested…

Christopher White   After three days of intense debate over the role of the laity in overseeing bishops accused of abuse or its cover-up, the US Catholic bishops voted to enact new standards for holding bishops accountable that include lay involvement, although stopped short of making it a mandatory requirement. While three major proposals were…

Questions of Faith   If all the bread and wine in the world disappeared overnight – and could no longer be made, would we be able to celebrate the Eucharist? Assuming that the Church wouldn’t make a special case to change its rules on this matter given the bizarre circumstance, the answer is no. It’s…

The question of intercommunion within our churches today is a big one, an important one, and a painful one. I’m old enough to remember another time – actually, to remember two other times. First, as a young boy growing up in the pre-Vatican II Church, intercommunion with other Christians, non-Romans, was a taboo. It just…

The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough The 20th Century was the bloodiest of all centuries, a whirlwind time of evil extremes, but it produced some great saints and Christian leaders too: in the slums of Calcutta was found the great-hearted Mother Teresa; in the racist American South,  Martin Luther King Jr; in the toxic atmosphere of…

Pól Ó Muirí There was a united Ireland of sorts in May when the electorate on the island’s two jurisdictions, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, cast their votes in local and European Union elections. Ironically, it was the party most associated with a united Ireland, Sinn Féin, which did worst at the ballot…