Sometimes you’d be forgiven for thinking that there is nothing to celebrate in being Catholic and Irish in modern Ireland. Hostility towards the Church is extremely high and truth be told it was always going to intensify in the run up to the visit of Pope Francis and the World Meeting of Families. A poll…
About six months before Benedict XVI was due to visit Britain in 2010, a rather unfortunate memo from the foreign office was obtained by The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The fruit of a brainstorming session amongst officials, the paper was called ‘The ideal visit would see…’ and included suggestions that the Pope’s visit could be marked…
There’s a depressing sense of déjà vu in the Church as allegations continue to multiply that the former Archbishop of Washington DC Theodore McCarrick sexually took advantage of young seminarians. Dr McCarrick – who resigned from the College of Cardinals at the weekend – is also accused of two counts of sexual abuse of children.…
The visit of Pope Francis this August will be a tremendous moment of grace for the Church in Ireland. It’s the first papal visit since the historic trip of St John Paul II in 1979 and only the second time that a Bishop of Rome has set foot on Irish soil. Speaking at the ancient…
We’ve become depressingly familiar with using terms like ‘dark chapter’ to reflect on certain periods of Irish history – particularly the 20th Century. You’d be forgiven for thinking that until the last few years, the story of the Irish State was one solely of darkness and misery. True, the past wasn’t all great – but…
In the Bible, the whole of salvation history is one crisis after another: expulsion from Paradise, the destruction of Babel, the Flood, exiles, and the obliteration of the monarchy. The history of the Israelites in the Old Testament – God’s Chosen People – is a story of being stripped of everything that they believed gave them…
Theologians and those who reflect on religion and culture often ponder to what extent Catholicism was actually ever deeply embedded in the Irish psyche. This is not an issue about religious practice or the dominant position of the Church in Irish society. Fr Oliver Rafferty SJ has observed that during the 1950s – thought by…
The decision that Irish people are being asked to make on May 25 is one of epic proportion. Never before in the history of this State have people been asked whether or not they want to vote the fundamental right to life of one particular group out of constitutional existence. Bunreacht na hÉireann is not…
The foray into the abortion debate of the leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) at the weekend is a puzzling one. I emphasise the leadership element to the intervention since I’ve been contacted by several priests this week who are members of the ACP but deeply annoyed at the statement and the obvious…
Pope Francis often chides Christians who are “stingy” with God’s mercy, preferring instead to preach a Christianity that is burdensome. The Pope is certainly not stingy with mercy, nor is he stingy with his time. He devoted several hours to listening individually to survivors of clerical sexual abuse at the Vatican last week. But, it…
Michael Kelly