What kinds of things help induce mysticism in our lives? I was asked that question recently and this was my immediate, non-reflected, answer: whatever brings tears to your eyes in either genuine sorrow or genuine joy; but that response was predicated on a lot of things. What is mysticism? What makes for mystical experience? In…
Notebook You may well consider this an example of too much information but when visitors to my home use the guest bathroom they rarely ever comment on the very high quality hand soap on offer or even the interesting selection of reading material strategically placed for those whose stay may be a little longer. However,…
Surely the best health news announced recently was that wild polio has now been officially eradicated from Africa. This was an ambition declared by Nelson Mandela in 1996, and it has now been achieved: the 47 countries in the continent of Africa have been certified by the World Health Organisation as “free of polio”. ‘Wild…
The View A man I have known for many years died last week in our parish. He was a genuinely good man – husband and father of four children, very talented, a former vice-principal at our local grammar school, but what marked Declan Martin out was his consistent service to and care of others, and his…
With restrictions ongoing, many parishes are in deep financial trouble, writes Chai Brady While the tired old canard of priests always talking about the need to raise parish funds persists, many clerics are in fact reluctant ever to raise conversations about money. The fact remains, however, that parishes cannot run on goodwill alone and the…
Many people who don’t believe in God do believe that human behaviour is simply the result of social conditioning, writes David Quinn Atheists often enjoy making sport of religion. They mock us for believing in the ‘great sky-fairy’ (meaning God), or the virgin birth, or that a man can walk on the water, or rise…
Letter from Rome Robert Merton, a famous American sociologist, was, by all accounts, a smart guy. Among other things, he popularised the expression “law of unintended consequences” to refer to situations when a person does something for one reason, but he or she finds that it produces all sorts of other unexpected results. Right now,…
Marking an historical first in Pope Francis’ home country, the Diocese of San Luis in northern Argentina invited a transgender woman to read one of the prayer intentions at a public Mass celebrated by the local bishop. The invitation was issued to Francia López by civil officials to recognize the work she does among the…
The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. T.S. Eliot [pictured] wrote those words to describe how difficult it is to purge our motivation of selfish concerns, to do things for reasons that are not ultimately about ourselves. In Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, his main character…
Notebook One of the great surprises of the lockdown, for me at least, was just how many in Ireland are keen gardeners. People simply couldn’t wait for gardening centres to re-open, and when they did, on May 18, there were enormous queues of people desperate to buy seeds, pots and compost. My own lockdown gardening…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
Chai Brady
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.