Questions of Faith When criticising religion, it’s common to hear the expression: “Faith is believing in something without having proof.” This accusation is usually thrown at people who adhere to a particular religious or spiritual belief in an attempt to show the irrationality of their thinking. In others words, while you may think it’s noble…
Growing up as a Roman Catholic, like the rest of my generation, I was taught a prayer called, The Act of Contrition. Every Catholic back then had to memorise it and say it during or after going to confession. The prayer started this way: “Oh, my God, I am truly sorry for having offended thee…
The Notebook Fr Vincent Shelock “There were people of all ages, gathered ‘round the gable wall”, so begins Dana’s wonderful hymn telling the story of the Knock Apparition of August 1879. It’s a lovely image of Church – people of all ages, gathered, content to be with one another and respectful. I often think…
What happened to former Garda Majella Moynihan – pressurised into yielding her baby son for adoption, back in the 1980s, after she became pregnant out of wedlock – is distressing and upsetting. And it’s certainly unjust that women were stigmatised when this happened while the fathers were seldom held responsible for a pregnancy they had…
In recent years, Mary Immaculate College students have volunteered at a school for children with special needs in Siliguri, India. It is a small operation run by religious sisters and struggles to survive. Just across the road is a highly-resourced fee-paying boarding school. Over the entrance is a giant crest containing a cross, an image…
Some years ago, a dedicated, active, hardworking, popular priest who ran marathons for the hospice in his spare time, found himself experiencing something he had not anticipated, and did not recognise. He described those days as a time of “crisis in my ministry…my work was consuming me. I was too busy. Self-care and time off…
Talk is cheap when it comes to environmental piety, writes David Quinn Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl who has risen to prominence lately by warning us of an impending environmental apocalypse if we do not immediately make drastic changes to the way we live. Thunberg was the initiator of the first school…
Letter from Rome Inés San Martín When the bishops from the Amazon region gather in Rome next October, they will discuss the ordination of “elderly people”, preferably indigenous, to guarantee that the remote communities in the region have access to the sacraments. “Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested…
Christopher White After three days of intense debate over the role of the laity in overseeing bishops accused of abuse or its cover-up, the US Catholic bishops voted to enact new standards for holding bishops accountable that include lay involvement, although stopped short of making it a mandatory requirement. While three major proposals were…
The question of intercommunion within our churches today is a big one, an important one, and a painful one. I’m old enough to remember another time – actually, to remember two other times. First, as a young boy growing up in the pre-Vatican II Church, intercommunion with other Christians, non-Romans, was a taboo. It just…
Colm Fitzpatrick
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn