For hundreds of years, the Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto has been among the most popular destinations for Marian devotees in Italy. With a jubilee just weeks away, and a new status on the Church’s liturgical calendar, the shrine’s importance seems destined to continue to grow. According to Diletta D’Agostini, a journalist who…
We tend to nurse a certain naiveté about what faith means in the face of death. The common notion among us as Christians is that if someone has a genuine faith she should be able to face death without fear or doubt. The implication then of course is that having fear and doubt when one…
Notebook Fr Bernard Healy The approach of November in Rome is usually marked by additional bus services to the city’s cemeteries. Although religious practice rates in Rome are probably no more encouraging than in Ireland, the custom of the cemetery visit during November is still strong. The community of the Pontifical Irish College prays for…
The View In 1782, towards the end of the American war of independence, one of the most respected of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, scientist and diplomat, who negotiated both war and peace, expressed the opinion, “there has never been or ever will be any such thing as a good war or a bad peace”.…
Decades old tensions within the Church are showing themselves in a new and ugly fashion, writes Fr Bill Dailey CSC In the seminary, I had a moral theology professor who took a liberal, revisionist approach to Church teaching. They had a course packed with standard issue critiques of teachings I agreed with, and to my…
We have bequeathed young people a world where no one seems to know what the sexual rules are anymore, writes David Quinn There is a television series called The Affair. The name tells you what the series is about, although actually the affair itself is only a central feature in series one. After that, the…
A famous popular song, Baby, it’s Cold Outside – written in 1944 – has been banned on several American and Canadian radio networks for some time now because the male-female narrative implies a ‘lack of consent’ on the part of the female. Musically, it’s a great tune, cleverly syncopated between the male and female voice, as…
The outcomes of the October summit could have a huge impact on indigenous communities, writes Colm Fitzptrick It’s been a synod tinged with controversy over priestly celibacy and female leadership in the Church; amidst all of this, eyes were also focused on two statues stolen from a church near the Vatican and subsequently thrown in…
It’s hard to be humble, not because we don’t have more than enough deficiencies to merit humility, but rather because there’s crafty mechanism inside of us that normally doesn’t let us go to the place of humility. Simply put, as we try to be self-effacing, humble and non-hypocritical, variably we take pride in that and…
Notebook November is a reflective time as we remember our loved ones who have died. It is particularly a time of remembering those who died in war and strife. For us in Ireland, remembering our fellow countrymen who died fighting for a British army has not always been easy. In recent years we have come…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
David Quinn
Mary Kenny
Colm Fitzpatrick