Dear Editor, For the life of me, I cannot understand the stance of Independent members of the Oireachtas and local county councils. As Shane Ross remarked in last week’s Sunday Independent, the three-horse line-up to date for the presidential race lacks lustre and is second rate. Maybe Sinn Féin will pull a rabbit…
Political generosity in the upcoming presidential election Dear Editor, In the interest of democracy, local authority council elected members should be allowed a free vote when it comes to the nomination of presidential candidates. They should not be fettered by political party loyalties which block potential candidates. The constitutional requirements were never intended to be…
Dear Editor, I am responding to Mr Duffin’s letter from the August 14 edition, where he made the suggestion that perhaps the readings at Mass were too long, confusing and quite incomprehensible, and that shorter readings would be better for the lessening attention span of Mass goers. I think this thought is exactly one…
Today it is monkeys, not monks, that wander the cloisters of Toumliline, a former Benedictine monastery in the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. Perched on a hillside above the town of Azrou – about ninety minutes south of Fez – some twenty monks hailing from En-Calcat Abbey near Toulouse once called this place home. Arriving…
A hospital is supposed to be one of the safest places to go to amid armed conflict, like the war Israel is waging against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. However, there is strong evidence that Israeli forces are deliberately killing civilians, including women, children and journalists, in and around hospitals. On August 25, Israeli forces…
Dear Editor, Faced with the appalling evil of war, I suggest that the word ‘complicity’ is a more appropriate term than ‘cooperation’ as used by David Quinn in his recent article: “Is the Church cooperating with evil in Israel?” Complicity implies partnership in an evil action. It requires neither involvement in the core activity…
Should I offer the sacraments to a parishioner with a limited lifespan? A man who lives in one of my parishes was given six months to live last February. He is an ordinary simple man, who likes nothing more than farming his land. In fact, the thought of dying would not be as hard for…
The Philippines has suffered damaging floods despite the billions of pesos paid to contractors for hundreds of flood control projects, mostly in Bulacan province. The Senate has uncovered fake projects, overcosting and underperformance by contractors. Some senators claim in recent hearings that corruption is so widespread. Investigators cannot cope and law enforcement against fraud and…
The hope and dream of the late Pope Francis was to reform the Catholic Church and make it a synodal Church at every level, where everyone — laypeople, priests and bishops — are considered equal before God and Jesus of Nazareth, working together, sharing thoughts, listening and learning from one another, and participating humbly in…
We must act now for Gaza Dear Editor, what are we to say in the future when they ask us what we did during the Gaza genocide? What will we tell the children and grandchildren when they ask? That we wrung our hands at the horrors, lamented the starvation, the brutality, the bombings, the killings…