How should the Catholic Church respond when a pandemic breaks out? What is the correct pastoral response? What kind of pastoral response best fits with medical best practice? Are priests generally good at a time like this? What should we as individual Christians do? It’s hard to know at this stage whether ordinary people have…
Like many others, I was deeply distressed to learn of the recent revelations concerning Jean Vanier. He was a person whom I much admired and about whom on numerous occasions I have written glowingly, so the news about him shook me deeply. What’s to be said about Jean Vanier in the light of these revelations?…
The ‘free movement of peoples’ is one of the most strongly-held tenets of the European Union. It would not be too much to say that the EU’s absolute adherence to this principle was one of the triggers of Brexit. David Cameron, as British Prime Minister, begged the EU to allow the UK some leeway on…
The View One mercy of the General Election is that it diminished attention to the actual moment of Brexit on January 31. Brexit was not an election issue, given all-party agreement and support, but history will give credit, absent from the ballot box, to the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon…
The world is better for their presence over the years, writes David Quinn The record of the nuns is under attack again. The latest accusation is one of racism against children of ‘mixed race’ who found themselves in Mother and Baby homes and other Church-run institutions. The last Mother and Baby home closed down several…
Eduardo Campos Lima The search for a new dialogue between black Catholics and the hierarchy is on the agenda with Afro-Brazilian Catholic activists struggling to promote and increase participation of black people in the Church and society. Almost 56% of Brazil’s population has some African descent and, according to a recent survey on religion…
Letter from Rome February 21 marked exactly one year since the anniversary of Pope Francis’ historic summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis, which brought together presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences to promote a global culture of transparency and accountability. Coincidentally, the milestone came as the world focuses on a very different kind of…
The renowned spiritual writer Ruth Burrows begins her autobiography with these words: “I was born into this world with a tortured sensitivity. For long I have puzzled over the causes of my psychological anguish.” Unfortunately, to our loss, too many spiritual biographies don’t begin like this, that is, by recognising right at the start the…
Notebook Every church in Ireland has a box-shaped receptacle, of gold or silver, often decorated with precious jewels. In years past this special container was placed in the centre of the ‘high altar’, but now it’s usually on its own, on a separate column or plinth, with its own spotlight, in its own distinct space,…
I don’t imagine that the elections for the Seanad will deliver as much sound and fury as the General Election for the Dail. Quite rightly too – the Upper House is a secondary chamber which doesn’t govern the country. But it still seems to me to be important, and to bring another dimension to the…
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
John L. Allen Jr.