While news agencies and Catholic social media denizens these days gorge themselves on the Vatican’s mounting “Battle of the Books,” seeing who can craft the most sensational headlines or tweets about several controversial new volumes making the rounds, other outfits are, thankfully, still concerned with things that actually matter. Such is the case, for instance,…

Cindy Wooden Public criticism by cardinals and bishops is annoying – “like a rash that bothers you a bit,” Pope Francis said – but differences need to be aired and criticism can be helpful, he told the Associated Press. “You prefer that they don’t criticise, for the sake of tranquility,” he said in the interview…

The Enoch Burke case has been in the public eye for some time now. He was a teacher at Wilson’s Hospital Secondary School in Westmeath when controversy arose last year over his refusal to call a pupil by their preferred pronoun of ‘they’. He has been vilified by secular media for daring to refuse to…

Every year the week of prayer for Christian unity comes and goes. Traditionally, the week is celebrated between January 18-25, and is greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm. If we’re honest, most of us pay little more than lip service to the commemoration. Coming as it does so close after Christmas, many parishes find themselves…

There have been over 50 major battles between Scotland and England in the last thousand years, including the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, Bannockburn in 1314, Flodden in 1513, the much-lamented Culloden in 1746 and the Battle of the Braes in 1882, over the cruel Highland Clearances (when people were evicted to make way for…

Forgiveness on this island can only be progressed if we bring to light the truths about our troubled past, says Archbishop Eamon Martin Although I was only eleven years old in September 1973, somewhere lodged in my boyhood memory are news images of Church leaders gathering for an historic meeting – while others marched in…

In combating authoritarianism we have dismantled true authority, writes David Quinn Violent attacks on Gardaí are becoming more common. A few weeks ago, a Garda car was rammed in Cherry Orchard in Dublin, while two members of the force were seriously assaulted around the same time in Ballyfermot. In an incident last weekend, a Garda…

Elise Ann Allen In a scene reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 cinematic sensation The Godfather, Italy’s most notorious mob boss was arrested January 16 after 30 years on the run, a development celebrated by civil and ecclesial authorities alike. A fugitive for the past 30 years, infamous Italian mobster Matteo Messina Denaro – tied…

Cindy Wooden Pope Francis’ fifth trip to the African continent will highlight gestures of peace and reconciliation, consoling the victims of violence but also emphasising the importance of each person sowing peace in the family, the neighbourhood and the nation. The Pope is scheduled to travel to Kinshasa, Congo, January 31-February 3 before making an…

My late father, Denis Cotter, was a teacher all his life. As a national teacher, he taught in the classroom for over 40 years, the first 13 years in what was then the new Dublin suburb of Crumlin, and the remainder in a small two-teacher school in Ballinacarriga near Dunmanway in West Cork. He retired…