Dear Editor, Is it wrong for me to say I am sick of hearing about mindfulness? I understand Bro. Richard Hendrick’s point that we should look to our own Catholic tradition of mindfulness rather than elsewhere (IC 03/08/2017), but I think the popularity of mindfulness has now gotten out of control. It is laudable to…
Category: Opinion
Access for Catholics to public office
Dear Editor, The Archbishop of Dublin states that after Irish Independence Catholics began for the first time to have access to public office (IC 13/07/2017). The archbishop is misinformed. Catholics were appointed to senior judicial and administrative posts soon after Emancipation. One of the few positions barred to them by the 1829 Act was the…
Countering modern media distractions
Dear Editor, Like Dr Andrew Maxwell (Letters IC 20/07/2017), I too spent almost all my working life in South Africa and have a similar view to his on the situation of Catholicism here after those years. I agree that the younger generation mostly seems absent from participation in Church matters in Ireland today and would…
Direct provision will be our next scandal
Dear Editor, The excellent article and important research by Mags Gargan showing that the Government does not know the cause of death of more than one in three asylum-seekers who die in State care, once again exposes this country’s attitude towards ‘foreigners’ (IC 27/07/2017). The sheer carelessness of this is hard to exaggerate. The State…
Not enough notice for collection
Dear Editor, The Sunday collection in aid of the famine-stricken countries of Africa was a very laudable action which had the potential to raise many millions. However, the opportunity was somewhat wasted by the lack of preparation. Most Mass-goers only knew of the collection when it was announced at Mass on the day and they…
Our utmost in dealing with our Faith
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
The complexity of adulthood inevitably puts to death the naiveté of childhood. And this is true too of our faith. Not that faith is a naiveté. It isn’t. But our faith needs to be constantly reintegrated into our persons and matched up anew against our life’s experience; otherwise we will find it at odds with…
Church doesn’t take her own social teaching seriously
Christopher Altieri Of all the areas that constitute proper objects of the Church’s magisterium – her official teaching office – Catholic social teaching is the one that has, without doubt, received the greatest attention and development over the past century and a half. Why is it, then, that so few Catholics seem to have heard…
Late labourers can do vital work
Greg Daly
The story of the workers in the vineyard is a powerful parable, and one especially apposite in these times when Pope Francis is trying to build on St John Paul’s efforts to draw back into the Church’s flock those stray sheep and lambs the Pope is tasked with tending and feeding. ‘Cradle Catholics’ and those…
Fluid families and fewer fathers
David Quinn
Discussing the latest census data released last week, RTÉ’s George Lee said with a smile on his face that they show “people are still interested in each other but maybe in a more fluid way than the traditional way”. What did he mean? Simply this: the family based on marriage is not as strong as…
A Catholic Dunkirk – in reverse
John L. Allen Jr.
Right now, cinemas are featuring the summer blockbuster Dunkirk, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, about the famous WWII evacuation of trapped Allied troops which most Brits regard as among their finest hours. That evacuation, in which hundreds of ordinary people joined an impromptu flotilla to bring the troops home, occasioned Winston Churchill’s famed 1940…