Editor’s Comment When bad things happen to good people – what philosophers and theologians call the problem of evil – is one of the most troubling and persistent questions facing religious believers. How does one reconcile belief in the existence of a God who is all-loving and all-powerful with the reality of evil in…
I was chatting with a group of friends, and the conversation turned to the mood of the times – with particular application to the new sensitivities around sexual harassment and those who prey on young girls. “Remember that song that Maurice Chevalier used to sing, Thank Heavens for Little Girls? It would be banned if it…
The View I recently spent a morning with religious education teachers and diocesan workers from the Diocese of Derry talking about the teaching of relationship and sex education. I met a wonderful group of lively, compassionate, caring, interested and dedicated young people. The following day in Galway, I met priests, brothers and sisters who belong to religious…
Separating sex and love has been a disaster for men and women, writes David Quinn Even Freud believed a certain amount of repression of our instincts was necessary to civilisation. Freud was the ‘patron saint’ of anti-repression but he saw that a certain amount of repression, or to put it another way, of ‘civilised…
Veritas is finally profitable again, but that’s no reason to rest easy, writes Greg Daly It’s taken a long time, but Ireland’s biggest religious publishing and retail company has finally – and tentatively – returned to profitability. Veritas, the Irish bishops’ publishing arm, has been struggling for years, battling with an uncertain retail climate…
With fantasy fiction set to dominate television again this Christmas, Niall Gooch regrets that filmmakers often get it so wrong I’ve known some pretty crushing cinematic disappointments. There were the Star Wars prequels; two total disasters and one that occasionally rose to the level of watchable mediocrity (fortunately the series seems to be recovering…
Spirituality Several years ago I received an email that literally stopped my breath. A man who had been for many years an intellectual and Faith mentor to me, a man whom I thoroughly trusted and a man with whom I had developed a life-giving friendship, had killed both his wife and himself in a…
The Notebook Fr Vincent Sherlock I listened recently to Playback on RTE RADIO 1. It’s an enjoyable show that gives snippets from the previous week’s programmes. Of course, Player and Podcasts have, in many ways, rendered it a less than vital piece of radio time but there’s still something engaging about it. I heard…
Dear Editor, At a time when other news outlets – including, sadly, other Catholic ones – fill their online and paper pages with ‘fake news’ about the Vatican, it’s reassuring to see The Irish Catholic holding the line for responsible journalism. Only this week the Vatican had to quash rumours irresponsibly reported across certain elements…
November is the month during which Christians traditionally pray for and remember in a special way our loved ones who have died. The reality about the human condition is that we will all die some day – Benjamin Franklin captured it well when he said: “in this world nothing can be said to be certain,…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn
Greg Daly
Fr Ronald Rolheiser