I hear it quite often at Mass now as part of the Prayers of the Faithful or the General Intercessions: ‘We pray particularly for the unborn…’ It struck me recently about how increasingly important this is becoming in a secular world. There are a shrinking number of areas where the unborn child is considered as…
A tweet from a Dubliner caught my eye the other day. “I’m an atheist,” he declared, “who grew up under the horrible yoke of Irish Catholic fundamentalism. Except here’s the thing: it was fine. Every Christian brother and priest I interacted with was perfectly decent.” He also declared that he much preferred the Ireland of…
Without wishing to re-hash the controversial tableau of the Last Supper at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Paris, at least we can be thankful that it has focused attention on how important the Eucharist is to Catholics. Knowledge of the Catholic faith is shallow indeed in Ireland. But perhaps one of the most striking illustrations…
Matt Letourneau If your child had a disability, wouldn’t you want to give them the best treatment, support and services available? According to the Disability Federation of Ireland, over 1.1 million people in Ireland have a disability — 22% of the population — and this group encounters more health, educational, employment and housing problems than…
Letter from Rome Last week Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a phone call to Pope Francis in which he urged a collective condemnation of what he said was the “ridicule” of moral and religious values at the Olympic opening ceremony. News of the call was published in an August 1 statement published on the…
Fr Shay Cullen The shocking testimonies of 2,300 victim-survivors of childhood physical, psychological and sexual abuse representing 200,000 children that suffered in government care centres and Church orphanages and institutions over the past 70 years have just been released in a New Zealand report that took six years to compile. The investigative report, Abuse in…
In 2018, Ireland ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities after over a decade of procrastination. The argument was that the Government did not want to make international commitments until it was ready to do so. Since then, progress on disability rights has been, to say the least, miserable. On January…
Letter of the week ETB schools neglecting faith formation Dear Editor, The article by Fr Martin Delaney in the July 4 edition of The Irish Catholic was very apt, articulate and welcome. It was most timely for many of us: pastoral leaders, concerned parents and board of school management members, who are trying our best,…
Notebook I think it was former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds who said in his resignation speech; “it is the little things that can trip you up”. I’m sure President Biden might agree. He mixed up the names of a few world leaders and it cost him his chance of a second term. But perhaps the incident…
What were we supposed to make of the Olympics opening ceremony last weekend? It very strongly divided opinion, for reasons to be explained. An Olympics is still an exciting event, even it has lost some of its allure and romance because of drug scandals and probably because it has got so big and commercialised as…
Martina Purdy
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn