In a deeply insightful book, The Grace of Dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh shares insights she has gleaned as a health professional from being present to hundreds of people while they are dying. Among other things, she suggests that the dying process itself, in her words, “is exquisitely calibrated to automatically produce union with Spirit”. In…
Dear Editor, I was relieved to read in last week’s The Irish Catholic of the strong pro-life presence Fianna Fáil will be bringing to the new Dail. For years now, people who hold pro-life views have been neglected by politicians, even those in Fine Gael who actively courted our vote in the previous election and…
There is a concerted campaign to relegate religion to the shadows of Irish society, writes Fr Martin Delaney Recently I watched a US television interview with President Obama in the Oval Office of the White House. The interviewer from CBS mentioned to the president that she had heard he carries in his pocket some mementoes…
Dear Editor, Thanks to Cathal Barry for his article ‘The Death of the Removal’ (IC 25/02/2016) and the valuable survey he made of practice in Irish dioceses. The one additional aspect I would have liked to have seen addressed is that of cost. Meanwhile, a survey of English and Welsh parishes would come up with quite…
Is abortion the only ‘rights’ issue Amnesty cares about? Dear Editor, Amnesty International was pushing an abortion agenda again last week with the release of their Red C poll findings. I don’t understand why a once-admirable human rights organisation is campaigning against the right to life of the most vulnerable human beings, babies in the womb.…
“It takes courage to stand up and be counted against someone like Mr Trump”, writes Editor Michael Kelly I spent some time last month in the United States where election fever has already gripped the country. Voters don’t actually go to the polls to elect a new president until November 8, but eight months out,…
It can be a source of comfort to know that while their child could not sustain life, the baby could give life to others, writes Mary Kenny Recently, the TV comedy writer Graham Linehan wrote a poignant article in the Sunday Independent magazine about the termination of a pregnancy. He and his wife Helen found…
Dear Editor, Mary Kenny’s piece on blind cricket commentator Dean du Plessis, of Zimbabwe, was very interesting (IC 18/02/2016). She says: “Mr du Plessis, aged 39, was born with serious tumours in his head, and it was predicted at birth that he could only live for a brief time. But he survived, had medical care…
Dear Editor, In this Year of Mercy I think it would be a good idea if the bishops of Ireland would set aside a Sunday of atonement for all the sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological abuse carried out within our Church. How can we expect individuals to seek mercy if we the Church don’t…
It’s vital that pro-life voters set tribal loyalties aside and are willing to stand up for life, writes Editor Michael Kelly The results of the General Election are somewhat of a curate’s egg. On the one hand, we have seen the election of many deputies who are pugnacious and unapologetic about their support for the…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny