Notebook At the heart of the Easter story is the triumph of life over death, love over hate and reconciliation over resentment. The following story brings the message of that first Easter right up to date. Over 80 years ago, in Greece, 50,000 Jews lived peacefully in Thessaloniki. It was a valued and vibrant community.…
The perceived tension between science and religion is a misunderstanding of the relationship between faith and reason writes Dr Andrew Meeszaros The alleged incompatibility between a scientific worldview and a religious one has been a major and consistent factor in the rise of the ‘nones’, or those with no religious affiliation. Because religion seems to…
One of the great benefits of lockdown, for me, has been the experience of participating in various lectures and talks by Zoom. And I can now say that I’ve ‘attended’ Trinity College Dublin – at least vicariously, via excellent history seminars, hosted by TCD’s Centre for Contemporary History and chaired by Prof. Eunan O’Halpin. Civil…
The View The situation in Northern Ireland today cries out for leadership capable of taking all the people forward together. It has seemed to me that those on other parts of our islands do not fully understand the situation here in the North. Indeed, I wonder, how many of us here comprehend it? To have…
Seeing everything through the lens of winners and losers makes losers of everyone, writes Michael Kelly “Them ‘uns have everything and we have nothin’” was the rather colloquial summary of a local Protestant woman when asked by BBC Radio Ulster why her young co-religionists were setting fire to their own communities. The ‘them and us’…
Letter from Rome When I was a precocious sophomore in high school, I once barged into the office of the Capuchin priest who was in charge of our religion curriculum to inform him that I had serious intellectual reservations about the Catholic Faith, and I found the answers being supplied in class unsatisfying. Fr Mike…
Scotland’s bishops are urging voters to consider ongoing efforts to legalise assisted suicide when the vote in elections for the Scottish parliament on May 6. They also pointed to the current efforts to introduce assisted suicide in Scotland” In a pastoral letter issued April 9, the bishops urged voters to put “human life and the…
Whatever energy we don’t transform, we will transmit. That’s a phrase I first heard from Richard Rohr and it names a central challenge for all mature adults. Here’s its Christian expression. Central to our understanding of how we are saved by Jesus is a truth expressed by the phrase: Jesus is the Lamb of God…
Notebook During the Easter Octave we friars here in St Saviour’s in Dublin sang lauds each day in our little oratory. It’s a quiet spot, certainly quieter than our church, whose doors open to a busy street. One morning as we sang I noticed a bright, delicate voice combining with our own chant: a bird…
Recently, two young women in Cork were pictured happily with new-born twins. Geraldine Rea and Niamh O’Sullivan were delighted with the babies and although Geraldine actually gave birth to the twins, both women will be registered as parents, under the Children and Family Relationships Act of 2015. They said it was a great step forward…
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
Michael Kelly
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser