Category: Web Watch

Listening to the edges of the Church

The Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region may seem almost irrelevant to many Irish Catholics: sure, Pope Francis talks often of growth in the Church coming from the peripheries, but there are peripheries and there are peripheries. Austen Ivereigh’s commonwealmagazine.org piece ‘When the Amazon meets the Tiber’ should help banish such scepticism, working  well…

Panning for gold on the Catholic internet

Some weeks ago I was lucky enough to be present in England’s New Forest for my god-daughter’s first profession as a Dominican sister. Her community, the Dominican Sisters of St Joseph, is a remarkable group of women – warm, supportive, fun, energetic, contemplative and evangelical – and very much a case study in G.K. Chesterton’s…

Fighting on 
the right side

“May have been the losing side,” says Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the cult sci-fi show Firefly about his part in a recent civil war. “Still not convinced it was the wrong one.” Over a year on from 2018’s referendum on repealing Ireland’s constitutional protections for unborn human beings, it’s clear that for many of those…

Throwing light on internet shadows

A lie can be halfway around the world, as the adage so often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain has it, before the truth has got its boots on. The internet has managed to make this depressing reality all the worse, and just as paper doesn’t refuse ink, so one thing screens cannot do is screen out…

Bishops reminded God uses web too

“Popular opinion,” began K. Albert Little on his Twitter account @cordialcatholic a fortnight ago, continuing, “whomever is running the @USCCB twitter account is pretty much singlehandedly restoring the confidence of the laity in the clergy. Also, did I use ‘whomever’ correctly?” Chicago-based Twitter stalwart Michael Bayer responded from 
@mbayer1248 astutely responded: “I can pretty much…

A very modern divine comedy

“I always have an issue with people who say ‘it’s much more fun to play [someone] bad’,” Michael Sheen tells the Sydney Morning Herald at smh.com.au. “Is it? I think we’ve failed as a species if good is boring. If we made good boring then we are doing something wrong. Goodness is about sharing, joy and…

A false solution born of real pain

Few articles have raised more eyebrows among Catholics online of late than James Carroll’s inflammatory piece in theatlantic.com entitled ‘Abolish the priesthood’ and subtitled ‘To save the Church, Catholics must detach themselves from the clerical hierarchy – and take the Faith back into their own hands’. By no means worthless, and in some ways a…