Very few readers of The Irish Catholic will be watching season three of Twin Peaks, I suspect. It’s not on one of the main channels and it has only a cult following because its content is too surreal for most tastes. But in one recent episode we were taken back to the first test of…

Though it sounds terrible to say out loud, generally speaking, the death of a Catholic bishop doesn’t really rate as a news story anywhere outside his own diocese. Most bishops aren’t towering public personalities, and besides which, with more than 5,000 bishops in the world and an age profile that skews old, deaths just aren’t…

Miguel Diaz Epluribus unum. This motto appears in the Great Seal of the United States, the seals of top US government officials, and on US coins. While not as explicitly religious as the oft-cited motto, “In God we Trust”, this other foundational American motto not only supplies the building blocks for authentic community and human…

The complexity of adulthood inevitably puts to death the naiveté of childhood. And this is true too of our faith. Not that faith is a naiveté. It isn’t. But our faith needs to be constantly reintegrated into our persons and matched up anew against our life’s experience; otherwise we will find it at odds with…

Christopher Altieri Of all the areas that constitute proper objects of the Church’s magisterium – her official teaching office – Catholic social teaching is the one that has, without doubt, received the greatest attention and development over the past century and a half. Why is it, then, that so few Catholics seem to have heard…

The story of the workers in the vineyard is a powerful parable, and one especially apposite in these times when Pope Francis is trying to build on St John Paul’s efforts to draw back into the Church’s flock those stray sheep and lambs the Pope is tasked with tending and feeding. ‘Cradle Catholics’ and those…

Discussing the latest census data released last week, RTÉ’s George Lee said with a smile on his face that they show “people are still interested in each other but maybe in a more fluid way than the traditional way”. What did he mean? Simply this: the family based on marriage is not as strong as…

Right now, cinemas are featuring the summer blockbuster Dunkirk, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, about the famous WWII evacuation of trapped Allied troops which most Brits regard as among their finest hours. That evacuation, in which hundreds of ordinary people joined an impromptu flotilla to bring the troops home, occasioned Winston Churchill’s famed 1940…

One year ago, virtually everyone who knew him was stunned by the suicide death of the most prominent American Hispanic theologian that we have produced up to now, Virgilio Elizondo. Moreover, Virgil wasn’t just a very gifted, pioneering theologian, he was also a beloved priest and a warm trusted friend to countless people. Everyone dies,…

At the suggestion of a doctor, I occasionally have recourse to an over-the-counter medication called ‘Night Nurse’. It is a helpful aid to sleeping when you’re feeling a bit chesty, but it should be used sensibly, even perhaps sparingly, as it contains the opioids of paracetamol, promethazine and dextromethorphan. Thus, whenever I purchase a bottle…