Fr Bernard Healy The Notebook I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Jerusalem this spring. Whilst there, I was able to visit a site sacred to our Jewish brethren, namely the Western (or Wailing) Wall. The Wall stands as a visible reminder of the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the…
Ireland’s educational infrastructure is in deep trouble. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the biggest single issue facing schools is the teaching of religion. Minister for Education Richard Bruton has latched on to the issue of the place of Faith in education as a convenient diversion from the real issues facing pupils and teachers on…
It’s six months now since I was obliged to leave the lovely old flat in central Dublin which I had rented for 21 years. It was on the second floor of an old Georgian building and I loved it. It was full of books and old things, nooks and crannies, memorabilia and memories and I…
Martin Mansergh The View The political history of 20th-Century Ireland is book-ended between the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. These descriptions are very evidently linked symbolically to key events in the Christian calendar. Pearse’s writings leading up to the Rising are suffused with religious metaphor, for which he was notably…
Lots of small, kind gestures make saints, writes David Quinn A few weeks ago during a chat with a renowned Italian journalist, the Pope seemed to call the existence of Hell into doubt, or so it was reported. The journalist, Eugenio Scalfari (94), is founder of the traditionally anti-clerical newspaper, La Repubblica. Pope Francis…
When an apparently innocuous teaching document comes out of Rome – and a Pope calling us to holiness fits that description better than most – it’s always important on the Vatican beat to ask: why this, and why now? When you apply the context lens, two recent events help answer that question. One was yesterday: Amoris…
Belief in God today is often seen as a naiveté. For many, believing in God is like believing in Santa and the Easter Bunny – nice, something for the kids, a warm nostalgia or a bitter memory but not something that’s real, that stands up to hard scrutiny and indeed stands up to the dark…
Dear Editor, The stalwarts of the prolife movement continue the fight for life on many frontlines these days and yet we still don’t see the big picture. I heard a discussion the other day which made me jump; it was not focused on the numbers aborted or the horrifying array of methods or the blindness…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough Some three weeks ago a supermarket in the small town of Trèbes in the southwest of France, became a scene of terror. An armed man, Redouane Lakdim, claiming to act in the name of Islam, entered the shop, shot a worker and a customer, and took a hostage,…
The View The view that an unborn child has the right to life is a view which is shared by millions across the world. You would not think so, listening to some of the media in Ireland at the moment. As long ago as 1924, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Austen Ivereigh
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Nuala O’Loan