Dear Editor, I believe your paper’s coverage of the blasphemy question – most recently in your Book Editor’s comments – misses the point (IC 25/05/2017). Blasphemy is not about passing comments on God, or the beliefs people hold about God; these are already explicitly allowed for in our Constitution and the law itself. Rather blasphemy…
Category: Opinion
Problems facing the world mustn’t make us pessimistic
“There has never been a greater need for mutual understanding and cooperation”, writes Michael Kelly Sadly we’re becoming all-too-used to that sinking feeling of waking up in the morning to turn on the radio to news of yet another terrorist atrocity in towns and cities that are known to us. That feeling is all-the-more heart-wrenching…
Luther’s message to a new Taoiseach
“With abortion legislation, he did not permit deputies to vote according to their consciences”, writes Mary Kenny Europe is this year marking the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous first protest, in 1517, which became in effect, the beginning of what is sometimes called the Protestant Revolution, and sometimes the Reformation. The Catholic Church has,…
Pope Francis and building a better world
We are challenged to build an economy that is designed to serve people, says President Michael D. Higgins At the Vatican, I had the great honour of meeting with a man who exemplifies in the most striking and moving of manners the extraordinary importance of the spiritual as a powerful wellspring of global ethics, coupled…
Enda Kenny: the best Taoiseach that secular Ireland ever had
It is easier for politicians to attack the Church and go along with the secular agenda, writes David Quinn What are Catholics to make of Enda Kenny’s time as Taoiseach? This is a very broad question because the answer doesn’t depend solely on his attitude towards the ‘institutional Church’ or to some of the big…
When does faith disappear?
When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead” he added a question: What kind of a sponge does it take to wipe away a whole horizon? I often ask that question because just in my own lifetime there has been an unprecedented decline in the number of people who go to church regularly and, more…
Having confirmed young people, we have to affirm them
Fr Vincent Sherlock Two days before the celebration of Confirmation in our parish we gathered for a short practice. I looked at the group of 38 boys and girls preparing for Confirmation (as an aside, the 38, typical, I would say, of many parishes like my own, represent the total number of pupils in senior…
We should never forget the bravery of missionaries
Dear Editor, I was glad to see you give prominence to the selflessness of missionaries on last week’s front page (Nun Vows: ‘They’ll have to shoot us’ IC 18/05/2017). The words of Sr Margaret Sheehan FCJ that she would only be driven out of her work in South Sudan at gunpoint is typical of the…
Ian Brady and the problem of evil
“To say that he suffered from a ‘mental illness’ is to suggest that people with a mental illness are inclined to be psychopathic killers”, writes Mary Kenny I’ll never forget Michael Parkinson, the television host, telling me about his experiences as a young reporter in the north of England during 1966, when he was sent…
If Hell is a reality, priests should preach about it
It’s wrong for clerics to use the excuse of a past overemphasis on fire and damnation to avoid talk of the reality of rejecting God, writes David Quinn Pope Francis has something of a cuddly image with the general public and with many priests. The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), for example, wants the incoming…