Christopher White After three days of intense debate over the role of the laity in overseeing bishops accused of abuse or its cover-up, the US Catholic bishops voted to enact new standards for holding bishops accountable that include lay involvement, although stopped short of making it a mandatory requirement. While three major proposals were…
The question of intercommunion within our churches today is a big one, an important one, and a painful one. I’m old enough to remember another time – actually, to remember two other times. First, as a young boy growing up in the pre-Vatican II Church, intercommunion with other Christians, non-Romans, was a taboo. It just…
Dear Editor, Mary Kenny’s mention of The Handmaid’s Tale in her aside about terms like ‘forced birther’ (IC 13/6/2019) raises an important point that should be borne in mind by those who would claim that pre-Repeal Ireland was akin to Margaret Atwood’s dystopia. In the original novel, women are indeed treated as commodities – or…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough The 20th Century was the bloodiest of all centuries, a whirlwind time of evil extremes, but it produced some great saints and Christian leaders too: in the slums of Calcutta was found the great-hearted Mother Teresa; in the racist American South, Martin Luther King Jr; in the toxic atmosphere of…
Pól Ó Muirí There was a united Ireland of sorts in May when the electorate on the island’s two jurisdictions, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, cast their votes in local and European Union elections. Ironically, it was the party most associated with a united Ireland, Sinn Féin, which did worst at the ballot…
The summer has come and I am on holidays on a small island off the west coast of France. The landscape is a flat patchwork quilt of salt marshes criss-crossed with bicycle paths. Cycling from one village to the next, it is the landmark of the church spire that draws you to your destination. Village…
No community should botch its deaths. Mircea Eliade wrote those words and they’re a warning: if we do not properly celebrate the life of someone who has left us we do an injustice to that person and cheat ourselves of some of the gift that he or she left behind. With this in mind, I…
Mother’s Day is a very old tradition – linked both with ‘Lady Day’, being the Feast of the Annunciation, and ‘Mothering Sunday’, when apprentices had time off to return to their mother-village. Father’s Day is of more recent coinage, launched in America in 1910, by one Sonora Smart Dodd, wishing to honour her father, who…
A national assembly or synod which listens to the experience of the laity could help alleviate the current crisis the Irish Church is facing, a prominent Jesuit has said. Fr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ said that the Church in Ireland is at a “crisis” point and that a national assembly or synod which draws together religious…
A call by the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore to roll out Alpha courses across his diocese has been warmly welcomed by Alpha’s Teresa Cronin. “To have the Church from the top behind it has been an answer to prayer,” she told The Irish Catholic. “Alpha is part of a bigger vision of renewal, moving…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Maria Steen
Mary Kenny
Colm Fitzpatrick
Susan Gately