Dear Editor, Perhaps Archbishop Diarmuid Martin did confuse a handful of people during the referendum campaign, as Fr Andrew McMahon relates (IC 10/09/2015), but it is striking that those he quotes as examples of such confusion were an English deacon and an American website. Is it possible that something has been lost in translation, that…

Dear Editor, In the Catholic Church we have an ongoing discussion about the crisis in vocations in the ministerial priesthood in Ireland in terms of staffing numbers and the challenges it poses. It perplexes me to see reactions from around the country when parishes get upset when their bishop announces he no longer has a…

Dear Editor, I was surprised to see so little coverage in The Irish Catholic of how people from Drogheda walked to Tallaght on August 29 to present the Dominican HQ with a petition signed by 22,000 people objecting to the impending departure of the town’s Dominican community. Surprised, but not heartbroken. Isn’t it time to…

Dear Editor, It is encouraging to hear that parishioners across Ireland are making plans to welcome refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, and encouraging too to hear of bishops attempting to coordinate this response. Unfortunately, you report the Department of Justice as saying that a mere 520 migrants will have refugee status, with…

Dear Editor, I live beside the refugee centre, outside Portlaoise, which was the Montague Hotel. I have been making their case over the course of the last eight years. Many of these people have been kept here, each family with only one room as their living quarters, since it opened in 2007 and the State…

Dear Editor, It was disheartening to read the ‘Letter from Rome’ by Cindy Wooden in the issue of August 27. The notion that a group of theologians and canon lawyers spent three days engaged in semantics aimed at placing conditions on the mercy and compassion of Christ poses certain challenges to the debate. Likewise, the…

Dear Editor, In his most interesting letter regarding the face of Our Lady of Knock sculpted by the renowned Italian sculptor Professor Lorenzo Ferri (IC 03/09/2015), Msgr Denis O’Callaghan correctly observes that the professor “was inspired to read the image of the Mother of Jesus as a reflection of that of her Son on the…

Dear Editor, I was delighted to read that two missionaries and an overseas chaplain are being honoured by President Michael D. Higgins for their “distinguished service” (IC 03/09/2015). Missionaries have devoted their lives to the service of others and have achieved the most incredible things in the field of medicine, education and human rights in…

Dear Editor, The abortion industry in the US has been thrown into turmoil as secretly taped videos showing Planned Parenthood (PP) officials haggling over the price of body parts from aborted babies have gone viral on Youtube. The mothers of the aborted babies were not informed about their dead babies organs being sold. In one…

Dear Editor, During my pilgrimage to St Patricks Purgatory in June this year I was given permission to carry out a questionnaire about the three-day pilgrimage for my theology dissertation. If any of The Irish Catholic’s readers have recently or in the past experienced the pilgrimage and would be kind enough to complete a questionnaire…