Several weeks ago after giving a lecture at a religious conference, the first question from the audience was this one: How can you continue to stay in a Church that played such a pivotal part in setting up and maintaining residential schools for the indigenous people of Canada? How can you stay in a Church…
Notebook When I was a student at the Irish College in Rome back in the 1980s one of the features of our lives was the interaction we had with Irish couples who came out to Rome to be married. Sometimes there were four or five couples each week. Many of them travelled to Rome on…
Dr Gavin Ashenden, honorary chaplain to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from 2008 to 2017, was received into the Catholic Church in December 2019. He recently gave a talk to ‘The Keys’ (the Catholic Writers’ Guild of England and Wales) about his journey. At the Church of England synod of 2008, liberals ‘squeezed out conservatives’ from…
The View Strange things have happened in the Catholic Church during recent years. Once the hierarchy of the Church and her clergy seemed, to so many of us, to be in some way superhuman, immune to normal temptations, strongly united through the graces of ordination in defence of the Church and her people against the powers…
The day might not be far off when protesters invade Irish churches, writes David Quinn Eight Catholic churches in Canada have been burnt by arsonists in the last few weeks and in some cases totally destroyed. Ten churches were vandalised in the province of Alberta on one day alone last week. The attacks are almost…
Letter from Rome Toward the end of this week, rumours made the rounds in the Vatican press corps that Friday would be a venerdi di fuoco, meaning a day of fire. Friday came and went without sparks, so we breathed a sigh of relief. It turned out to be short-lived, however, because Saturday brought a…
Carol Zimmermann In response to a late June announcement, the United States will be conducting an investigation of former federally funded boarding schools to search for graves of Native American children, a spokesperson for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said June 28 the bishops will “look for ways to be of assistance”. “It is…
O God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. We pray these words with sincerity. Do we ever really mean them? Can we honestly say that the heartaches that drive us to our knees are a longing to see God?…
Notebook It is 1947, and dusk is falling on the town of Drogheda. In the White Horse Inn on West St, a middle-aged writer is at work, penning a short essay. His name is Clive Staples Lewis. He had already made his name as a scholar of English literature, and as a lively proponent of…
I’m fascinated by the way that old ideas often return wearing new livery. The latest health advice against Covid-19, and other ailments is – ventilation. That is, a dose of fresh air which Florence Nightingale was advocating back in the 1850s, and which every convent school practiced, before the era of the (less healthy) air…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.