Dear Editor, I agree wholeheartedly with your Editor’s Comment about what Ireland can learn from the pro-life community in the United States (The Irish Catholic, May 5, 2022). It is not at all clear to me what in fact the US Supreme Court will do in terms of the notorious Roe V Wade case that…
Notebook In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings there is a wonderful passage when the wizard Gandalf is face to face with Denethor, the ruler of Gondor. In the face of the threat of the evil Sauron, Denethor sees it as his task to defend his kingdom, and above all to keep the walls…
At a superficial level, the main takeaways from the assembly elections are: that a nationalist is now in-line to be the First Minister in a polity created to ensure a permanent unionist government; the SDLP received a terrible drubbing and that party is now on life support; the main winner is the ‘centre ground’ as…
The View Long ago in a different century, I was a member of a college drama society. One of the plays we put on was a Thornton Wilder piece called Our Town. In the course of that play (spoiler alert) there is an unashamed tear-jerker moment. Emily, a 26-year-old who has died, is allowed to…
There was a time when the laity didn’t take it upon themselves to advise a bishop, and the distance was maintained between the See and the flock. But we are moving at a different tempo now, as the new Bishop of Galway, Michael Duignan, indicated at his installation last weekend. Synodial measures are encouraging the…
The institution on which the family is based is in trouble and no-one cares, writes David Quinn Marriage in Ireland is changing rapidly. Fewer marry at all. We marry later. We are more likely to break up, and same-sex couples as well as opposite sex couples can legally wed. There are far more civil ceremonies…
A friend of mine, somewhat cynical about the Church, recently remarked: “What the institutional Church today is trying to do is to put its best face on the fact that it’s dying. Basically, it’s trying to manage a death.” What he’s suggesting is that the Church today, like a person struggling to accept a terminal…
Dear Editor, While I agree with David Quinn that we must try to avoid any potential schism over recommended changes to Church teaching and practices as a result of our Synodal pathway journey [The Irish Catholic – April 21, 2022], this must not be at a cost of a veto on any significant change. Those…
Notebook When I was about seven years old, my county, and indeed the whole country, was shocked by the murder of Bernadette Connolly, a young girl from Collooney. It was as if the world had stopped spinning and her name was on everyone’s lips. Later, I came to know her father and some of her…
If a leaked document from the US Supreme Court this week can be taken at face value, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal in all 50 states will soon be overturned. A draft document obtained by the news website Politico suggests the top US court is in favour of overturning Roe v Wade.…
Michael Kelly
Breda O'Brien
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser