Dear Editor, In relation to Fr Oliver Rafferty’s concerns about the content of the theology courses in St Patrick’s College (‘Maynooth rejects claim it pays ‘lip service’ to theology’ IC 03/12/2015). Msgr Hugh Connolly should not be placed in the position where he feels compelled to defend the college of which he is president.  My…

Dear Editor, The Paris atrocities have been widely covered on media reports and rightly so since nobody wants to see innocent people being murdered. However, I hope that in future we will see more balanced coverage of the air strikes now taking place against ISIS. In the TV reports covering the French response we were…

Dear Editor, Martin Mansergh (The View, IC 03/12/2015) states how “our military neutrality is a policy”. As such, it primarily concerns our interests. Yet our ideals or values arise as well. Bunreacht na hÉireann (Art. 29) mentions the “pacific (ie non-belligerent) settlement of international disputes”. Hence a constitutional endorsement of the “ideal of peace”.  Historically,…

Dear Editor, Only recently did I become aware of the decision of some non-practicing Catholics to have their children baptised in their local parish church. Why? Simply because they cannot get the child into the local school unless he/she has a baptismal certificate. Even though the parents and their adult family responded to all the…

Dear Editor, I was extremely impressed by former Dublin footballer Ger Brennan in an interview which featured in The Irish Catholic recently. It was a real delight to read about how his faith journey developed alongside his footballing and professional careers. In our celebrity-mad world, young people ought to look to up to the likes…

Dear Editor, For the first time in a long time I feel there is a bit of a positive buzz around the Church in Ireland, thanks to Pope Francis nominating the Year of Mercy. I was very heartened to read in The Irish Catholic (IC 26/11/2015) that most dioceses across the country have embraced the…

Dear Editor, I was fascinated to read ‘Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul’ (IC 26/11/15). Of course, there is a close link with Ireland in that Blessed Mother Teresa came to the Loreto convent (now an Irish school) in Grange Road, Rathfarnham, as a novice in the late 1920s. As religious affairs correspondent of…

Dear Editor, The Catholic sacrament of matrimony comes to us from the non-Christian Latin word ‘matrimonium’, meaning the state or position of being a mother. The problem is that the word ‘marriage’ also comes from the Latin and, in my view, means much the same. I am not a lawyer and for all I know…

Dear Editor, Fr Rolheiser (IC 19/11/2015) praises certain saints for their “stunning self-confidence” and “very robust self-image” in comparison to the rest of us, “simply lack[ing] sufficient self-image and self-confidence to do what they did”. In doing so he, to my mind, creates too sharp a contrast between the “spiritual giants” and us non-giants. He…

Dear Editor, In your November 26 edition the question is asked, is there evidence that Irish people “punch above their weight” in paedophilia? There is no such evidence.  But the impression has been successfully given that paedophilia is a specially Irish or Catholic or clerical problem. It is not.  Catholics are partly to blame that such an impression…