Dear Editor, I am appalled and deeply saddened by your headline in last week’s paper (04/09/2014) “Bishop demands answers from SVP on gay donation”. I feel we have stepped back into the 1950s when we had the Magdalene laundries, and the shame and disgrace heaped on the heads of the girls and families who found…

Dear Editor, In The Irish Catholic on 28/8/14, Archbishop Eamon Martin said “on matters relating to marriage and family, poverty and injustice etc, Irish Catholics must not be afraid to speak out with conviction in the public square”. I wish to say that surely Church teaching on marriage and family life includes parents loving and…

Dear Editor, I am delighted to see that the St Vincent de Paul Conference in Galway is reaching out to gay people. The charity is based on helping the most vulnerable in our society. Can any Christian person seriously argue that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are not vulnerable, particularly given…

Dear Editor, I read with shock – but hardly surprise – your front page article ‘Bishop demands answers from SVP on gay donation’ (IC 04/09/2014). It is further evidence of a pattern in Ireland that has seen Catholic organisations drift far away from Church teaching. No-one can object to the Society of St Vincent de…

Dear Editor, Fair play to the women of the Killaloe diocese who are standing up in opposition to the permanent diaconate. (Diaconate sparks discrimination row in Killaloe’, IC 4/9/2014). The International Theological Commission in Rome under the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger left the question of female deacons open, yet the Church in Ireland – having ignored…

Dear Editor, It’s good to see Bishop Martin Drennan starting to stand up for the Catholic faith. Maybe this will catch on among members of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. A story was told a few years ago that a chill came in to a meeting of the bishops’ conference, but had to leave because…

Dear Editor, The recent denial by Irish doctors of a suicidal woman’s request for abortion has been greeted in some quarters by indignation, as if the decision by doctors to deliver the baby alive was an affront to her mother’s rights. But I strongly suspect that it is the frustration of the woman’s request for…

Dear Editor, It seems that man’s thirst for gossip and a good story is insatiable. Often times a colourful character, of seemingly spectacular deeds, will overshadow the true hero of a story, the memory of whom is often lost on account of the ordinariness that usually constitutes such heroic virtue. Think of St Joseph and…

Dear Editor, The Irish way of doing things is not the universal way, and the Vatican is right to insist that the universal rules about the sign of peace be properly followed. When I attended Mass in Bangkok, the congregation greeted each other with a ‘wai’ – that is by raising their joined hands to…