Dear Editor, Now that she has broken through the political ‘glass ceiling’ and commands publicity opportunities for her activities distributed from powerful media outlets such as the Fine Gael Press Office, I appeal to Minister Josepha Madigan to use her influence – particularly with the Taoiseach and her Government colleagues – to embrace and champion…

Dear Editor, Archbishop Eamon Martin’s appeal that the issue of abuse not be treated as a political football within the Church (IC 21/2/2019) is a powerful and wise call, and one that urgently needs to be heard. Too often over recent decades have advocates of married and women priests treated the abuse crisis as an…

Dear Editor, Prof. Stephen Bullivant suggests the Irish bishops follow their English and Welsh counterparts and reintroduce Friday abstinence (IC 7/2/2019). Until 1966, healthy adult Catholics had to abstain from flesh meat on Friday. In 1966, St Paul VI allowed for substitution of abstinence with certain good works.  St John Paul II confirmed this in…

Dear Editor, Your front-page story about Irish missionaries in Venezuela was a perfect illustration of the varied gifts religious life offers to the Church and the world God has created, and a wonderful demonstration of the ‘mosaic’ of consecrated life your paper showcased this week (IC 7/2/2019). The German journalist Peter Seewald interviewed the then…

Dear Editor, Mary Kenny’s discussion of the pros and cons of censorship, and how her own views on the subject have varied over the years (IC 31/1/2019) was the sort of honest analysis Ireland’s media sees too little of. Too often our airwaves and newspapers are rife with dogmatic claims that censorship is never right,…

Dear Editor, Gabriel Doherty’s comments in your front-page story this week (IC 24/1/2019) have really shown up the ignorance and intellectual shallowness of our political classes. That the Taoiseach should have thought references to private property and the Common Good in our Constitution derive from socialism rather than from basic Catholic social teaching points to…

Dear Editor, It is baffling to read of plans by Germany’s bishops to debate the issue of clerical celibacy as a response to the abuse crisis, while Munich’s Cardinal Marx is calling for Church teaching to be reconsidered in light of the crisis (IC 10/1/2017). Granted, there may well be a case for changing the…

Dear Editor, As you and your readers will be aware the Holy Father Pope Francis has called the presidents of bishops’ conference to Rome to discuss the vital issue of safeguarding at a meeting from February 21-24. As we are all too painfully aware in Ireland, this is an issue that has profound consequences for…

Dear Editor, When I was visiting Dublin during the Christmas holidays, I was astonished to see large billboards with pictures of cows and chickens and such slogans as ‘It’s not a personal choice if someone is killed’. Apparently paid for by a vegan organisation, these ads try to drive home the idea that choices that…

Dear Editor, It was warming to know that you wrote about the perils of excessive drinking, especially at Christmas in your paper (IC 20/12/18). Our society doesn’t take drinking seriously enough which has caused more deaths and destroyed more families than one could imagine. The figures you cited which say that 74% of people drinking…