From a dark past of once allowing and ordering the censoring, banning and burning of the Talmud and other Hebrew texts, the Vatican has deepened its decades of fruitful dialogue and cooperation with Jewish leaders with a new interfaith study programme. Some 20 Jewish and Christian scholars began a three-month hybrid course in mid-July at…

I just celebrated a wedding Mass. By any standards it was a ‘big wedding’ with around 250 people in attendance. It was heartening to look down the church and see so many people gathered to celebrate and share the day with the young couple and their families. I like days like these. At Holy Communion,…

A multi-coloured banner at Dublin’s Heuston Station – one of a number celebrating ‘Pride’ – urges us to feel “Proud to be Myself”. It prompted me to ask myself if I was ‘proud to be myself’. My answer to myself was that I couldn’t really see why I should take any special credit for being…

Recently, I got on a crowded Luas and sat down, delighted to find an empty seat. I then glanced at the other side of the carriage. My heart sank. I saw immediately why the seat had been free. There were two tough-looking individuals with their feet up on the seats. Both had that malnourished look…

The core of Catholic moral theology is under severe pressure from quarters within the Church itself, writes David Quinn The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is one of the most important offices in the Vatican and in the Church worldwide. Its most famous recent prefect was Joseph Ratzinger. He was appointed in…

Russia has been identified as the main culprit of information manipulation on the continent of Africa, writes Sofia Zate An expert panel on African disinformation has sounded the alarm on media manipulation and interference on the African continent during a press briefing in Dublin this month. Dr Dinesh Balliah, director of the Wits Centre of…

Rome is a city that prides itself on having seen it all over the course of its millennia-long history, so much so that “Been there, done that” might well be the unofficial civic motto. Here’s how journalist Fabrizio Roncone summed up Roman reaction to the record heat this week, which reached an official peak of…

Kate Scanlon The United States endured a record number of mass killings in the first half of 2023, according to a new analysis. The report came in tandem with news that at least four people were killed in a mass shooting in Hampton, Georgia, south of Atlanta, on July 15. A database maintained by The…

In this ‘Notebook’ section of last week’s The Irish Catholic, Fr Bernard Cotter raised some very important points about the need to renew the Sacrament of Baptism in our parishes [The Irish Catholic – July 20, 2023]. He made a few suggestions of how this might happen and invited us to share any ideas we…

Sex and money: two of the major temptations that lure men and women into a fall. Perhaps previous generations might have said – two of the weapons used by the devil to entrap humans into the error of their ways. Interestingly, the phrase ‘struggling with his demons’ is still very much in use. On both…