Fr Bernard Healy The Notebook Pope Francis has me worried! At a recent Public Audience he reminded preachers to prepare homilies well and told us that they “should not last more than 10 minutes, please”. Whatever conclusions my congregation might reach about how well-prepared my homilies are (I try, honestly!), long-windedness on a Sunday…
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it has been five years since the dreary rainswept evening when the little-known Archbishop of Buenos Aires appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica having just been elected as Pope Francis. Dressed in a simple white cassock and introducing himself to the world with an almost faltering buona…
Toddlers are criminals. At least they would be if they were not below the age of criminal responsibility. If they were held to the same standards as the rest of us, the police would be overwhelmed with reports of toddler-related public disorder, affray, criminal damage, riot and assault. If charged with such crimes, most toddlers…
It is very cheering to hear that during last week’s great snow event so many people acted in a helpful and neighbourly way, and were particularly aware of looking out for the elderly. Yet this can be a delicate question – how to be kind to the elderly – and there is sometimes a fine…
The View As I have listened and watched the arguments for abortion in Ireland, north and south, I have been moved to wonder about all the women who have been unable to conceive a child, or whose babies died in the womb before they were born, and about those whose children were stillborn. How…
Christianity isn’t a ‘snowflake’ religion, writes David Quinn During the snow of last week, a number of dioceses around the country said churches should close and also advised Catholics that they were released from their obligation to attend Mass on Sunday if they felt it would be unsafe to travel to church. This got…
No community should botch its deaths. Last month a wonderful leader within the faith community in Canada died and it could profit us all to more fully receive his spirit. How do we do that? It can be helpful for us, I believe, to highlight those places where his life, his energy, and his leadership…
The Notebook It’s the million-dollar question: what do priests do all day? It’s a hard question to answer, because firstly priests vary, but also ministry situations differ. To give a definitive answer, you’d have to survey every priest in Ireland and feed the results into some massive computer to get an average for the…
The Church doesn’t exist for itself – it exists to serve the world. It may seem like the most obvious of things to say, but too often we cling to old structures and patterns of behaviours that have long since outlived their usefulness as if they are things that matter in and of themselves. The…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser