Editor’s Comment   So, Irish parishioners will not have to face the upheaval of yet another new translation of the Mass – at least for now. Reflecting the pragmatism that is the defining characteristic of the modern Irish Church, the cost and huge effort that has gone in to the last revision of the Mass…

Fr Ronan Drury – who was buried on Monday – shaped several generations of students for the priesthood. He lived at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth for more than a third of that institution’s history. As Professor of Homiletics – the art of preaching – he helped aspirants the length and breadth of Ireland prepare for…

Editor’s Comment   News that the final Mass during the Pope’s expected visit next year will almost certainly be held in Dublin’s Phoenix Park is a welcome sign that Church leaders are thinking big. There has been precious little to be joyful about in the Church in Ireland in recent decades, and many people acutely…

Editor’s Comment   When bad things happen to good people – what philosophers and theologians call the problem of evil – is one of the most troubling and persistent questions facing religious believers. How does one reconcile belief in the existence of a God who is all-loving and all-powerful with the reality of evil in…

November is the month during which Christians traditionally pray for and remember in a special way our loved ones who have died. The reality about the human condition is that we will all die some day – Benjamin Franklin captured it well when he said: “in this world nothing can be said to be certain,…

Editor’s Comment BBC One aired the first instalment of Gunpowder at the weekend, a three-part retelling of the 1605 Catholic plot to blow up the House of Lords. It made for tough – if gripping – viewing. The scenes of the executions of Catholics amidst a blaze of anti-Catholic hysteria were brutal and it seemed…

Pope Francis has convened a special synod meeting of bishops for 2019 that will address issues facing the Church in what’s known as the Pan-Amazon region of South America. The meeting will look at Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Peru, Venezuela and Surinam. Francis announced the move at the weekend and said the…

“Catholics need to become better at standing up for themselves”, writes Michael Kelly There has been much to criticise in the Catholic Church recently. And Catholics have not been shy about naming the serious wrongs that have been done in the name of the Church or by people within the Church. The Church has also…

“People speak of a fresh and increasing enthusiasm for youth ministry”, writes Michael Kelly A Nigerian priest once told me that there were so many Irish priests in his homeland when he was growing up he just assumed that Jesus was Irish. For him – and most other Catholics in Nigeria – the spread of…

Bishop Eamonn Casey “…was greatly loved by the priests and people of the dioceses of both Kerry and Galway”, writes Michael Kelly It’s hard to get across to younger generations today the enormity of the scandal that was the revelation in 1992 that Bishop Eamonn Casey had secretly fathered a child years earlier. One got…