The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy The alarm on my phone goes off at 5.50 am. I drag myself out of bed and try to say a prayer. After all, it’s Lent! Washed and dressed, I head downstairs and meet two of my companions here in Rome’s Irish College: fellow priests, one Nigerian, another Irish.…
We are all aware of the phrase ‘climate change denier’ – Mary Robinson said this week it was “evil” to deny the reality of climate change. We know, too, about ‘Holocaust deniers’ – ignoramuses, or worse, who claim that the crimes of the Third Reich did not occur, or that the numbers murdered were exaggerated.…
Archbishop Martin would have nothing to lose by speaking up, writes David Quinn In an address last week, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin criticised the “euphoria” that greeted the fall of communism in Europe some 30 years ago. He was quoting the recently deceased Belgian cardinal, Godfried Danneels. Archbishop Martin said Cardinal Danneels had been troubled…
The View As I sit to write, I am conscious that Brexit in all its manifestations is causing increasing concern across Ireland – north and south. It was all due to come to some sort of fruition on Friday March 29, but now it seems that fruition may occur on April 12, May 22…
Letter from Rome Elise Harris By the time he died at the age of 50, Greek Catholic Bishop Vasile Aftenie was crippled, maimed and, according to accounts of those who knew him, out of his mind due to torture endured while imprisoned by Romania’s communist regime. When he finally succumbed in 1950, Bishop Aftenie…
Parish-based formation could have academic advantages, Greg Daly is told Every cloud, as the saying goes, has a silver lining, and if there’s an unlikely advantage to Ireland’s currently tiny numbers of seminarians it’s that it’s giving hierarchy an opportunity to transform priestly formation in the country. For Fr Eamonn Fitzgibbon of Limerick’s Mary Immaculate…
Inés San Martín During a visit to the Italian city of Loreto on Monday past, Pope Francis signed a new document dedicated to youth and called on people to remember the importance of the family for society. According to tradition, the Nazareth home of the Holy Family was transported to the city of Loreto in the…
Questions of Faith One of the most common reasons people decide to leave the Church is because of the internal corruption that runs to even the upper echelons of the hierarchy. The decision to leave for this particular reason is one that everybody can sympathise with, even the most ardent and devout believers. All too…
Most of us have been raised to believe that we have right to possess whatever comes to us honestly, either through our own work or through legitimate inheritance. No matter how large that wealth might be, it’s ours, as long as we didn’t cheat anyone along the way. By and large, this belief has been…
The Notebook Donal McMahon In all fine old cities there are the obligatory sights of the guidebooks and tour buses but also the little discoveries that you make for yourself. The first are always well worth the visit but it’s the second unpredictable ones that often linger just as much or even more in…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Nuala O’Loan
Greg Daly
Colm Fitzpatrick
Fr Ronald Rolheiser