Thirty or 40 years ago when vocations to the priesthood in Ireland were plentiful, the prospect of becoming a bishop probably seemed quite appealing to parish priests – at least to the ambitious ones. The joke was that once a man had been appointed to the episcopate, he would never again eat a bad meal…or…
Dear Editor, In Catholic circles mention the words ‘torchlight procession’ and most will think of Lourdes, southern France, where Our Lady appeared more than a dozen times to a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. In this little French town since then a public Torchlight Procession takes place every night, with pilgrims from all…
And so it emerges, as I had suspected, that there is no substantial anti-immigrant vote in Ireland. Yes, there is some concern about proportions and numbers in some parts of the country, but there is evidently no traction for an anti-immigrant party – as exists in France, Germany and to some degree in Italy and…
The View It really is a case of being careful what you wish for. When I wrote before the election that it was time to move away from the politics of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I had no idea that the country would instead vote for Tweedledodge. In fairness, neither did Sinn Fein, which could have…
The concerns of Catholics were invisible in the election because Catholics made themselves invisible, writes David Quinn In the run up to the general election, there were a handful of statements from bishops such as Eamon Martin, Kevin Doran and Alan McGuckian but for the most part the Church kept as low a profile as…
In government, Sinn Féin will disappoint and entrench the growing divide between many of our people and the political class, writes John McGuirk In a country unused to earthquakes, even the mildest tremor in the ground might feel like the end of the world. When Mount Vesuvius erupted and swept through the Roman town of…
The fact that five million children under the age of five will die this year due to extreme poverty is something that should motivate the world to act, according to Pope Francis. Speaking at a summit in Rome with some of the world’s most powerful financial officials, the Holy Father also alluded to the situation…
Perry West A prison ministry in South Carolina offering catechetical formation and sacrament preparation has helped change the lives of five inmates brought into the Church in the winter. The inmates at Perry Correctional Institution had been attending RCIA in the prison since July 2019. Three of the men were baptised at a December…
Thirty years ago, John Jungblut wrote a short pamphlet entitled, On Hallowing Our Diminishments. It’s a treatise suggesting ways we might frame the humiliations and diminishments that beset us through circumstance, age and accidents so that, despite the humiliation they bring, we can place them under a certain canopy so as to take away their…
Someone at the weekend asked me if I am optimistic about the future of the Church in Ireland. I replied that I preferred to use the word ‘hopeful’. In our regular discourse, we often use the words hopeful and optimistic interchangeably. But, in the Bible hope and optimism are not the same thing. Unlike optimism,…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser