I was blessed to grow up in a very sheltered and safe environment. My childhood was lived inside of a virtual cocoon. In the remote, rural, first-generation, immigrant community I grew up in, we all knew each other, all went to the same church, all belonged to the same political party, all were white, all…
Category: Comment & Analysis
Being the face of God for others
Fr Martin Delaney reflects on an inspiring true story of how the kindness of ordinary people can have such an impact on the lives of others
No good can come from applying labels to children
“Human life is not some consumerised product… whereby only those who pass the test of being ‘chosen’ may be regarded as admissible”, writes Mary Kenny
Ploughing through the numbers
Greg Daly examines a recent survey of religious belief and practice in the farming community
Creating software, moral formatting and living in sin
While I was doing graduate studies in Belgium, I lived at the American College in Leuven. On staff there at the time, in the housekeeping and maintenance department, was a wonderfully colourful woman whose energy brought oxygen into a room but whose history of marriage somewhat paralleled that of the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel.…
Sniffing out new bishops is a papal priority
Pope Francis has entrusted nuncio’s with the important task of finding candidates who are ” managers, but pastors”
Pro-natalist policies require support for mothers
“in so many… countries desperate for better fertility… the economic structure of society just doesn’t support mothers, fathers and families”, writes Mary Kenny
Caricaturing the Church’s teaching on birth control and family size
The Church is not involved in a numbers game, writes David Quinn
Indulgences revisited
When Pope Francis launched the Holy Year of Mercy, he promised that Christians could gain a special indulgence during this year. That left a lot of present-day Roman Catholics, and even more Protestants and Evangelicals, scratching their heads and asking some hard questions: Is Roman Catholicism still dealing in indulgences? Didn’t we learn anything from…
Walking through the ‘fifth Gospel’
Michael Kelly reflects on his experience in the Holy land as a “deeply spiritual encounter with Christ”