Letter from Rome For all intents and purposes, as a liturgical matter Italy’s coronavirus pandemic is over as of the weekend. Beginning on Sunday, family members and friends are no longer required to observe social distancing when they come to church, and churches are once again able to have choirs at Mass and the assembly…
…by far and away, the biggest addiction in the whole world The ancient Greeks had gods and goddesses for everything, including a goddess of Shame called Aidos. Shame for them meant much more than it normally means to us. In their mind, shame brought with it modesty, respect and a certain needed reticence before things…
Notebook It can be very hard to involve young married people in the life of the parish. It’s understandable – they haven’t a minute to themselves, between driving their children to GAA training, matches, piano lessons, pony-riding, Comhaltas…you get the picture. Young parents, anxious to give their children every opportunity, seem to be forever on the…
The former king, Juan Carlos of Spain – who has gone into voluntarily exile after a series of scandals – would not be the first Bourbon monarch to be in trouble because of money matters and an unwise extra-marital liaison. It is understood that Juan Carlos’ son, Felipe, insisted his father leave Spain because of…
The View A book that I treasure for many reasons is a Holy Bible given to me as a Christening present in 1947, and inscribed “to my godson Martin with affectionate greetings”. It is compact with a leather cover, and, despite being well thumbed, its 1,400 pages of thin but strong paper are very well preserved.…
It would seem that only a fraction of those who used to attend Mass have returned, writes David Quinn In America, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, Thomas Tobin is worried that when this pandemic finally ends a lot of worshippers will not return to Mass because they will have lost the habit. On Twitter…
Letter from Rome I never thought I’d live to see it, but there it was in The New York Times on July 23, big as life, in the headline over a column by Paul Krugman: ‘Why can’t America be like Italy?’ Since then, unflattering comparisons of the US to Italy in terms of handling the coronavirus have become…
We no longer understand melancholy. Today we lump all forms of melancholy together into one indiscriminate bundle and call it ‘depression’. While a lot of good is being done by psychiatrists, psychologists and the medical profession in terms of treating depression, something important is being lost at the same time. Melancholy is much more than…
Notebook Last weekend I found myself celebrating Mass in an almost empty church again. Our parish is part of the Kildare/Laois/Offaly two-week lockdown so we had no choice but to close our church doors for public worship. The Gospel passage of the frightened disciples in the little boat battered by the unexpected storm seemed very…
It is none of my business whether Catholic friends and neighbours attend weekly Mass or not. After all, I spent formative years in France where I was told by a Catholic father of seven children that he only attended Mass occasionally, saying: “Je suis Catholique, mais je ne suis pas fanatique!” This French paterfamilias evidently…
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
David Quinn