Dear Editor, Last week, thousands of school children across Ireland received Leaving Cert results and for those up North, A-Level results. The years leading up to this moment were filled with stress, tears and feelings of uselessness. There is so much pressure on kids to achieve top grades, so-much-so that many use them as metric…

Dear Editor, Having just returned from the youth festival in Medjugorje, which I attended with my 13-year-old daughter, I can honestly say it was a fantastic experience! Over 60,000 young people from over 80 countries attended a five-day festival and clearly demonstrated how alive the Faith was, and is, in this small village in southern…

Dear Editor, How unfortunate that the newly appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh should start his new ministry by high-ighting the Church’s failure with regard to the status of women in its ministry. When he said that the Church “has to follow the lead of its founder Jesus Christ” regarding women’s place in the hierarchy (IC…

Dear Editor, Fr Conor McDonough’s piece on religious leaders with ‘chutzpah’ and Greg Daly’s feature on the 42 martyrs under consideration for beatification made for a powerful combination in your latest issue (IC 18/7/2019). Episcopal boldness is something we clearly need in our Church today, but it’s not good enough to whinge that the bishops…

Dear Editor, Mary Kenny is exactly right when she says the one-time Anglican clergy of the Ordinariate point to how married clergy could become feasible in the Church (IC 11/7/2019). Years ago Pope Benedict said something very similar. Basically, when married Anglican clergy join the Church they become married Catholic laymen, albeit ones with pastoral…

Dear Editor, Your coverage of Google and Youtube’s interference with last year’s abortion referendum process (IC 4/7/2019) raises grave questions about Irish democracy and its susceptibility to the caprices and biases of multinational tech corporations. Yes, it is true that it was not simply pro-life organisations and terms that were affected by manual tinkering with…

Dear Editor, The commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings was important not only to remind us of the courage and sacrifice of the previous generation in fighting the evils of Nazism but also to remind us that contending with evil now falls to this generation. There is always something that needs to…

Dear Editor, Perhaps the most interesting aspect of your interview with Archbishop Eamon Martin this week (IC 20/6/2019) was not his comments on the country’s smallest dioceses, or even his openness to a national synod in a few years, but his barely veiled suggestion that the Archdiocese of Dublin be dismantled to make the Church…

Dear Editor, Mary Kenny’s mention of The Handmaid’s Tale in her aside about terms like ‘forced birther’ (IC 13/6/2019) raises an important point that should be borne in mind by those who would claim that pre-Repeal Ireland was akin to Margaret Atwood’s dystopia. In the original novel, women are indeed treated as commodities – or…

Dear Editor, Regarding Fr Gerry O’Connor’s criticism of an American bishop’s remarks on the unsuitability of Gay Pride Marches for children (IC 6/6/2019), I would like to ask him if he ever witnessed a Gay Pride March. In my opinion not even a self-respecting homosexual person would approve of them Fr O’Connor does not see…