Dear Editor, Gabriel Doherty’s comments in your front-page story this week (IC 24/1/2019) have really shown up the ignorance and intellectual shallowness of our political classes. That the Taoiseach should have thought references to private property and the Common Good in our Constitution derive from socialism rather than from basic Catholic social teaching points to…
One of the great sorrows of many Irish parishes is the pain felt by parents and grandparents when family members no longer go to Mass. Whenever I speak at parish events or novenas, I see the acute pain as people tell me about how they did their best to bring their children up in the…
Ireland is to have a referendum in the near future on liberalising the divorce law, and if other countries are an example of how that usually pans out, easier and quicker divorce will very probably follow. The arguments for more liberal divorce are simple: why force a couple to stay together when they are unhappy?…
Muslim religious objections may pose an unforeseen difficulty for Government abortion plans, writes Greg Daly “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience,” Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch tells his daughter in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a powerful statement, and one worth bearing in mind…
The View Catholic education in this country is not working. Last Summer’s abortion referendum was a wake-up call in this regard: how could so many people, educated in Catholic schools for the most part, have voted to strip the most vulnerable among us of all rights? How could an educated Catholic have voted for…
The Church may need a serious theology of masculinity, writes David Quinn Men have been receiving a very bad press lately, and not just specific men, but men in general. The words ‘toxic’ and ‘masculinity’ are commonly and routinely joined together in a way ‘toxic’ and ‘femininity’ rarely are. The current round of attacks…
Everything is of one piece. Whenever we don’t take that seriously, we pay a price. The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot…
Dear Editor, It is baffling to read of plans by Germany’s bishops to debate the issue of clerical celibacy as a response to the abuse crisis, while Munich’s Cardinal Marx is calling for Church teaching to be reconsidered in light of the crisis (IC 10/1/2017). Granted, there may well be a case for changing the…
It is not now an infrequent occurrence to meet someone who will observe of contemporary Ireland that “it’s not the country I grew up in”. Some will go further and say “it doesn’t feel like home anymore”. At a basic level, the world and society are always changing. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544BC…
The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy Tidying up isn’t my favourite activity! I had to do a lot of it this summer when I moved from a parish assignment back to student life. Even so, I’m surprised that the latest reality show hit Tidying Up With Marie Kondo caught my attention. Now, I’ve seen…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Greg Daly
Maria Steen
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser