Fr Conor McDonough OP Among the books on my shelves, one of my favourites is Ernest Klein’s two-volume Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. It doesn’t offer definitions of words, but shows their roots in other languages and periods. So the entry for the word ‘diamond’ traces it back to a Middle English word which…

“We’ve become so used to Catholicism being the dominant culture, it no longer is”, writes Michael Kelly We’ve been talking about crisis in the Church in Ireland for so long it runs the risk of becoming a vicious circle of negativity. Paradoxically, the need to face up to the piercing urgency of Church reform and…

To understand Good Friday we need to separate what was happening on the surface from at some deeper place Good Friday was bad long before it was good, at least from outward appearances. God was being crucified by all that can go bad in the world: pride, jealousy, distrust, wound, self-interest, sin. It’s no accident…

Michael Higgins It is a story of two Maries and their personal courage over against intransigent authority that is as much inspiring as it is dispiriting. Marie-Julienne Farrington, now deceased, was a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, its international leader, a university president’s advisor on spiritual matters, a French translator and a social activist. …

Discussions about Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on love and the family, even if they have not set ordinary parishes ablaze have, at least in certain circles, been characterised far more by heat than by light, especially since last September. That month saw Pope Francis respond to draft guidelines from the bishops of Buenos Aires…

Fr. Bernard Healy Last week Fr Tony Flannery attracted the attention of The Irish Times with a blogpost entitled ‘How Much of Church Doctrine do we Really Believe?’ The Church’s credibility problem in Ireland, he argues, rests on something deeper than recent scandals. He argues that “[s]ome of the very basic doctrines of the Church no longer…

Pope Francis has a reputation for speaking softly on issues, but when he has a mind to it, he can be very tough and direct as well. As an example of this, when he speaks about the family, he speaks as he always does, about the need for mercy and to meet families where they…

The drumbeat has grown incessant in recent months: religious congregations, we are told time and time again, agreed to pay half the cost of the State’s redress scheme for those who lived in industrial schools and similar institutions, and have not done so. Technically, it is admitted, they only legally agreed to pay €128 million,…

As I sat down to write this I was very pleased to learn that Frances Fitzgerald, the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, is asking for a “root and branch review” of An Garda Síochána, for a Patten-style international commission to examine Irish policing, as Lord Chris Patten and his Independent Commission provided a blueprint for…