Every so often, we get official confirmation of the obvious, and, surprisingly enough, it still makes waves. Such is the case again with the release of a preparatory document for an October summit of bishops on the Amazon, which confirms that the ordination of married “elderly people”, meaning men, will be on the agenda. From…
Questions of Faith When criticising religion, it’s common to hear the expression: “Faith is believing in something without having proof.” This accusation is usually thrown at people who adhere to a particular religious or spiritual belief in an attempt to show the irrationality of their thinking. In others words, while you may think it’s noble…
Growing up as a Roman Catholic, like the rest of my generation, I was taught a prayer called, The Act of Contrition. Every Catholic back then had to memorise it and say it during or after going to confession. The prayer started this way: “Oh, my God, I am truly sorry for having offended thee…
Dear Editor, Perhaps the most interesting aspect of your interview with Archbishop Eamon Martin this week (IC 20/6/2019) was not his comments on the country’s smallest dioceses, or even his openness to a national synod in a few years, but his barely veiled suggestion that the Archdiocese of Dublin be dismantled to make the Church…
The Notebook Fr Vincent Shelock “There were people of all ages, gathered ‘round the gable wall”, so begins Dana’s wonderful hymn telling the story of the Knock Apparition of August 1879. It’s a lovely image of Church – people of all ages, gathered, content to be with one another and respectful. I often think…
What happened to former Garda Majella Moynihan – pressurised into yielding her baby son for adoption, back in the 1980s, after she became pregnant out of wedlock – is distressing and upsetting. And it’s certainly unjust that women were stigmatised when this happened while the fathers were seldom held responsible for a pregnancy they had…
In recent years, Mary Immaculate College students have volunteered at a school for children with special needs in Siliguri, India. It is a small operation run by religious sisters and struggles to survive. Just across the road is a highly-resourced fee-paying boarding school. Over the entrance is a giant crest containing a cross, an image…
Some years ago, a dedicated, active, hardworking, popular priest who ran marathons for the hospice in his spare time, found himself experiencing something he had not anticipated, and did not recognise. He described those days as a time of “crisis in my ministry…my work was consuming me. I was too busy. Self-care and time off…
Talk is cheap when it comes to environmental piety, writes David Quinn Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl who has risen to prominence lately by warning us of an impending environmental apocalypse if we do not immediately make drastic changes to the way we live. Thunberg was the initiator of the first school…
Letter from Rome Inés San Martín When the bishops from the Amazon region gather in Rome next October, they will discuss the ordination of “elderly people”, preferably indigenous, to guarantee that the remote communities in the region have access to the sacraments. “Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested…
John L. Allen Jr.
Colm Fitzpatrick
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn