Paul Jeffrey A US physician who has won accolades for his service in a war-torn corner of Sudan said he has just done what any missionary is called to do. “I’m a lay missionary. We’re supposed to show the face of Christ to people, but how can you do that if you take off when…
Davis Clark asks whether Scotland is still haunted by anti- Catholicism The recent assault of a Catholic priest during an Orange parade has lent an extra bite to an age-old debate about the historical treatment of Catholics in Scotland. The assault, along with a report released this year by the Scottish government which found…
Letter from Britain A new report on sexual abuse committed by staff of international aid agencies could provide a blueprint for the Church in dealing with the aftermath of the accusations surrounding once-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington, and other high-ranking clerics that have come to light in 2018. The British Parliamentary International…
Some of my favorite authors are agnostics, men and women who face life honestly and courageously without Faith in a personal God. They’re stoics mostly, persons who have made peace with the fact that God may not exist and that perhaps death ends everything for us. I see this, for example, in the late James…
About six months before Benedict XVI was due to visit Britain in 2010, a rather unfortunate memo from the foreign office was obtained by The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The fruit of a brainstorming session amongst officials, the paper was called ‘The ideal visit would see…’ and included suggestions that the Pope’s visit could be marked…
Dear Editor, Greg Daly’s analysis piece, (IC 26/07/18) on the proposed referendum to remove the Constitution’s provision on blasphemy, and the associated Defamation Act 2009, was a timely reminder that it works, is important, and is a model for other countries. The purpose of the Constitution is to outline the standards we aspire to live…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough Archbishop Diarmuid Martin recently spoke with candour about the Church’s outreach to young people, describing it as “an area where I have failed”. If he has, he’s certainly not alone in the Irish Church. Young people today will not adopt the faith by osmosis, but need clear arguments, joyful…
The Netflix drama series The Crown, drawing, sometimes semi-fictitiously, on the private lives of the British royal family has been so successful that the BBC now plans to launch its own particular royal drama along similar lines. This new drama will be about the lives and loves of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s sister, who died…
If no human act is intrinsically wrong, morality is reduced to a calculus of consequences, writes Fr Vincent Twomey SVD It was 1968. Revolution was in the air. New-found affluence after the austerities of the post World War II era coupled with the sudden, unprecedented burst of scientific and technological creativity in the 1960s…
The View Martin Mansergh A collateral benefit of religious observance is that, from time to time, if one is listening to the readings, one is able to identify the source of familiar sayings. One of the best known is, “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (St. Mark’s Gospel, 3. 24-5).…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny