The View Pope Francis is sometimes controversial but never boring. As John L. Allen of Crux Now put it, the pontiff’s current trip to Iraq is perhaps his most emblematic trip – if only because his stubborn streak ensured that it happened. He ignored worries about super spreader Covid-19 events and security issues in order…
We have little right to be judging the past while we deny children their identity with the blessing of the State today, writes David Quinn ‘Who am I?’ was the question asked by a recent RTÉ programme about illegal adoptions in Ireland. It is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask ourselves. Most…
For better discussions on married priests we would do well to look to the Eastern Rite Christians, writes Peadar Laighleis Debates on married clergy have gone on as long as I can remember. Most people used the Protestant denominations as examples. Few referred to Eastern Churches – Catholic or Orthodox – though Catholic theology of…
Letter from Rome A n unusual sex abuse trial currently underway in the Vatican took a potentially explosive turn Wednesday, February 24 and the response may have a great deal to say about how serious the reforms launched by Pope Francis actually are. Three witnesses testified that Italian Cardinal Angelo Comastri, who was relieved of his…
A day after nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls were set free after being kidnapped two weeks, one nun has warned that nothing is being done to stop incidents like this from happening, and that unless action is taken soon, her country is headed for a catastrophe. Irreconcilable Referring to the violence and kidnappings that have ravaged Nigeria…
You are as sick as your sickest secret! That’s a wise axiom. What’s sick in us will remain sick unless we open it up to others and to the light of day. As long as it’s a secret, it’s a sickness. However, perhaps the problem is not with what we keep secret, but that we…
Dear Editor, Fair play to the Minister for Mental Health Mary Butler for acknowledging the importance of Mass for people of faith’s mental health [IC 04/03/2021] but to be honest it’s too little too late. For a large part of the last year we have been denied the sacraments. I understand the reason for the…
They say a picture paints a thousand words, and if that’s true the image of Pope Francis at the weekend standing in a bombed-out church in Iraq speaks more powerfully than any of the thousands of column inches that have been and will be written about the trip. As images go, it would be hard…
Notebook I’m a year older! This week I turned 58. When I was ordained, a priest in his fifties seemed a lifetime away from me. Now I’m nearer 60 than 50 and I wonder where the years have gone. The big difference, and I’m sad to say this, is that there are no 24-year-old priests…
When my brother James went to work in a bank, he was first sent to Oldcastle, Co. Meath. In those days – this was back in the 1950s – the Hibernian Bank was regarded as ‘the Catholic bank’, especially in counties nearing the border, while the Ulster Bank was regarded as ‘the Protestant bank’. Farmers…
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny