Courtney McGrailDear Editor, In 2017 or 2018, we can expect to have a referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (or the rights of the unborn). While there is an opinion that abortion is acceptable in exceptional circumstances, the questions foremost in my mind must be the following: Why is it an indictable offence…
Category: Opinion
The sums don’t add up
Dear Editor, Like many, I see no theoretical reason for celibacy in the case of secular priests. However, given the low salaries paid, how are the costs of a priest’s wife and family to be met let alone the problem of increasing the scale of property owned by the diocese or parish in order to…
Our churches as sanctuaries
Fr Ronald RolheiserWhenever we have been at our best, as Christians, we have opened our churches as sanctuaries to the poor and the endangered. We have a long, proud history wherein refugees, homeless persons, immigrants facing deportation, and others who are endangered, take shelter inside our churches. If we believe what Jesus tells us about the Last…
In praise of books at Christmas
Fr Conor McDonough OP In the far-east of Switzerland – la Suisse orientale, as the French speakers in the West charmingly call it – lies a town bearing the name of an Irish saint: St Gallen, a disciple of Ireland’s single greatest contribution to Europe, St Columbanus. The abbey that gave the town its name…
Bringing the Gospel to the marketplace this Advent
Michael Kelly“Jesus didn’t spend his time sitting around in the Temple or teaching in the Synagogue”, writes Michael Kelly
Watch The Innocents – the most poignant film I’ve seen this year
Mary Kenny“The director… transmits the fragility of faith as well as its strengths, and a genuinely powerful sense of sisterhood emerges…”, writes Mary Kenny
Family is changing but ‘traditional’ family remains all-important
David QuinnThe ‘Family Rhythms’ report gives cause for thought, writes David Quinn
Slaying the sectarian dragon
The tone of discussions about the Catholic Church in Ireland increasingly reminds me of growing up in the North surrounded by sectarianism, writes Michael Kelly
We can’t ignore today’s world
Dear Editor, It seems, to judge by your letters page and comment online in recent months, that there is a depressing determination among otherwise informed and faithful Catholics to turn their backs on the modern world. Perhaps the three most dramatic and obvious illustrations of this have been Catholic support for the Brexit vote in…
Others beyond Trump and Clinton
Dear Editor, Your correspondent Declan Cooney (Letters IC 01/12/2016) took Fr Gerry O’Hanlon to task for bemoaning the election of the Republican candidate as President of the USA. In doing so he repeated the “there was no other alternative [to Hilary Clinton]” argument which has already been trotted out – and refuted – ad nauseum. There…