The SDLP, who saw themselves as the moral voice of many Northern Catholics, now inhabit the same political space as their erstwhile competitors, writes Pól Ó Muirí By the standards of Catholic bishops in the North, the statement was robust. Issued at the end of October in response to the introduction of new laws…
We should save money and just let Micheál Martin vote 44 times on each Dáil vote, writes John McGuirk Watching the House of Commons in recent weeks, at the height of Brexitmania, probably the most unfamiliar part of it to those of us who observe Irish politics was the way in which the result…
Letter from Rome After Tuesday’s deadline for South Sudan to implement a peace agreement was again postponed, the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC), which unites representatives from all major Christian denominations in the country, including the Catholic Church, urged people not to lose hope. One global figure obviously cheering for a happy outcome is…
Nick Mayrand While US Catholics currently claim 13 official American saints, experts at Marquette University’s Raynor Memorial Libraries are doing their part to aid efforts to determine whether that number may soon grow to include Dorothy Day. Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in New York city in the 1930s following her conversion to Catholicism.…
What does it mean to have a vocation? The term gets batted around both in religious and secular circles and everyone assumes its meaning is clear. Is it? What’s a vocation? Karl Jung defined it this way: “A vocation is an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from…
Apart, of course, from the divine guarantee non praevalebunt (‘The gates of Hell shall not prevail’), part of the genius of the Catholic Church in facing the challenges of every era is the ability to read the signs of the times. Take the crisis of the Reformation. The huge renewal and reform of Catholicism that…
Notebook I ran into a resident of this parish recently, who asked me to sign a Mass card for him. A pen was procured, the signature added and details of the Mass intention noted. He explained who the person who had died was – the grandmother of a lady who is on one of our…
Dear Editor, Conor Donnelly (Facebook Community) referred to Catholics being told to vote for Republicans in the US. I wonder if he is aware that no Democratic candidate can be accepted unless he/she supports abortion, which means that those voting for a Democrat are endorsing abortion. I fail to see how any practising Catholic can now…
Last week a 23-year-old female teacher from a Dublin school was jailed for having sexual relations with one of her male pupils, an offence which occurred on his 16th birthday. The teacher, who has not been named, pleaded that she thought 16 was the age of consent. It is, in the UK: but in Ireland,…
The View How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What (if you will pardon the pun) could be more pointless than debating a question like this? Why anyone could ever have wasted time in such an exercise is now – and for a long time has been – unfathomable to many.…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Maria Steen