Notebook An Ash Wednesday scene in a home in our parish last week. John, a farmer, comes home after his day’s work is done. His daughter Clara is sitting at the kitchen table studying for her Leaving Certificate. John immediately notices that Clara is sporting a very big black cross on her forehead which she…

Our President, Michael D., has been giving a discourse on the evils of the British Empire, its violence, brutality, and class oppression (and a British newspaper, The Guardian, has chosen to publish his thoughts). He is right in much of what he says: imperialism was violent and brutal. He is also correct in saying that…

The View The past year has been so very strange for all of us – our ways of being and doing were suddenly and utterly changed. We ceased to be in charge of our own lives. Once we were able to gather as a community of God, pray together and celebrate the great joys of…

If you want to understand the past, one thing you must do is look to the economic conditions of the time, writes David Quinn Why were attitudes often harsh in the past? Is it because the people then were more horrible than now, and we are far more enlightened, or could it be that social…

While we are constantly being told we will learn from the pandemic, we haven’t changed our understanding of death, writes Ruadhán Jones Crises, whether natural disasters like pandemics or man-made ones like war, force us to confront the unthinkable; what does my death mean to me? What does the sudden eruption of death mean for…

Letter from Rome A Vatican tribunal last Wednesday heard testimony from the accused party in an unusual sexual abuse case, one involving a charge that one minor abused another during their time at a pre-seminary on Vatican grounds that provides altar boys for liturgies in St Peter’s Basilica and that’s produced roughly 200 priestly vocations…

A French nun who could potentially be the first woman to cast a vote in the Synod of Bishops said February 10 that her appointment is evidence the “clericalist mindset is changing” as more and more women assume high-level decision-making responsibilities in the Catholic hierarchy. Sister Nathalie Becquart told journalists that Pope Francis has been…

Notebook I had the privilege some years ago of participating in an academic conference in Athens, the city where so many elements of Western civilisation flourished for the first time: democracy, the writing of history, philosophy, and, perhaps most thrillingly, theatre. In Athens, religious festivals were marked by great dramatic competitions, in which tragedies composed…

In the times we are living through, it’s hard to know how to practice Lenten abstinence, since most of us have already forsworn the daily pleasures or self-indulgences which were once the subjects of Lenten penitence. Weight Scolded about the perils of increasing our weight, we’re diligently fasting two, three or four days a week.…