The excusable doesn’t need to be excused and the inexcusable cannot be excused. Michael Buckley wrote those words and they contain an important challenge. We’re forever trying to make excuses for things we need not make excuses for and are forever trying to excuse the inexcusable. Neither is necessary. Or helpful. We can learn a…
Notebook My summer holidays in Ireland included a visit to a rural pub/restaurant, where a family function was taking place. This event, maybe a christening or possibly a quiet second marriage, was attended by a large number of children, running all over the premises and annoying hoary old celibates like me. Sensing my annoyance, one…
Dear Editor, I was delighted to read in your issue of September 3 of the episcopal ordination of Fr Paul Dempsey. Although not from Newbridge, I attended a christening in his parish church a short while back and was inspired by the way in which Fr Dempsey delivered his homily on the importance of faith…
Thursday of this week – September 10 – was marked as World Suicide Prevention Day, and a very good cause this is. The prevention of suicide is heart-breakingly necessary, as anyone who has lost someone they loved in this way knows. The fact that families often cling to the view that a tragic death was…
The View Ireland is approaching the final phase of the decade of centenaries, commemorating events which led to a separate Irish state in parallel with the creation of Northern Ireland and partition and the fighting of a civil war over terms of the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland. The decade of centenaries, which in…
There appears to be no evidence that priests are more likely to abuse children than other clergy from other religious traditions which permit marriage, writes David Quinn The Vatican has just made a comprehensive response to an abuse commission in Australia. A bit of background is useful. In 2017, a Commission of Inquiry produced a…
The constraints brought about by Covid-19 have merely accelerated an inevitable decline, writes Chai Brady Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has never made a secret of the fact that he wanted out of Dublin when he was obliged to tender his resignation to the Pope on his 75th birthday. That milestone passed more than five months ago,…
Letter from Rome Some people, it would appear, simply are born for exile. Sometimes it’s a firebrand personality constantly irking the powers that be, but in other cases it’s mostly bad luck, circumstance and the fact that a given person is an inconvenient reminder of a system’s failures and blind spots even without trying. The…
Ed Condon Next month, the 2018 Vatican-China deal expires. Those close to the negotiations, both in Rome and in Beijing, now confidently predict a one-year extension to the two-year deal to be agreed. But while the last two years have failed to deliver any measurable progress on the Vatican’s priorities, the status quo of all-dialogue-and-no-delivery…
What kinds of things help induce mysticism in our lives? I was asked that question recently and this was my immediate, non-reflected, answer: whatever brings tears to your eyes in either genuine sorrow or genuine joy; but that response was predicated on a lot of things. What is mysticism? What makes for mystical experience? In…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Chai Brady
John L. Allen Jr.