Letter from America In what has been one of the darkest years in the history of the American Catholic Church, it may sound strange to speak of highlights. Yet, as the storm clouds of the clerical sexual abuse crisis overshadowed much of 2018, and lingers into 2019, looking back on the past year reveals…
Inés San Martín For a man who said that his pontificate would be a short one, Pope Francis is showing no signs of slowing down at the beginning of his seventh year as the successor of Peter. In many ways, 2018 was a roller coaster for the Argentine Pontiff who turned 82 on December…
This year I will restrict myself to focusing only on books that deal explicitly with spirituality, notwithstanding some very fine novels and books on social commentary that I read this year. But first, an apologia: taste is idiosyncratic. Keep that in mind as you read these recommendations. These are books that I liked, that spoke…
The Notebook Fr Vincent Sherlock One of my favourite childhood memories is going to Sligo with my parents on Christmas Eve. We’d go in the afternoon, spend a few hours in Sligo and call to Cloonamahon (then a Passionist Monastery near Collooney) or maybe to the Friary or Cathedral in Sligo and go to…
In her famous annus horribilis speech in 1992, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II described the fading year as one which “is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure”. Queen Elizabeth was reflecting on the fact that 1992 had seen her son the Duke of York separate from his wife, the Princess…
Dear Editor, It was warming to know that you wrote about the perils of excessive drinking, especially at Christmas in your paper (IC 20/12/18). Our society doesn’t take drinking seriously enough which has caused more deaths and destroyed more families than one could imagine. The figures you cited which say that 74% of people drinking…
More people go to a church over the Christmas period than at any other time of the year. So, shouldn’t the churches use this opportunity to attract more church-going right through the year? Some might call this a modern marketing opportunity. St Paul would call it evangelisation. If I were a marketing consultant, I would…
This was a terrible year for Ireland, writes David Quinn The year just gone will go down as one of the worst, morally speaking, since Ireland gained independence in 1922. May 25 – the date of the abortion referendum – will eventually be remembered as the day when a two-to-one majority of the Irish…
The View I was on the phone to a friend recently, discussing the sorry saga of the legalising of abortion in this country when she asked me whether I was reading much about it. I said no, I was considering how to decorate our home for Christmas, which I said was much more important. This…
The ‘progress’ of Irish society has come at a high price, writes John Waters There’s an essence of Ireland that does not reside in landscape, or institutions, that rarely manifests nowadays in formal culture. It’s to be encountered chiefly in fleeting encounters with people – benign explosions of mirth and knowingness that leave you changed…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Maria Steen