Q: I read online that a married Catholic needs their bishop’s permission to separate from their spouse. My husband abandoned our family to live with his girlfriend. How can I get our bishop to make him come back home? A: I’m sorry you’re going through such a difficult situation. I don’t know exactly where you were finding…
Exodus 17:8-13; Psalm 121 (120); 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8 Jesus told a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart Luke 18:1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. Luke 18:2 He said, “In a certain city there was…
I bet you never noticed Catholic statues of saints in hospitals or other public places in Ireland. We used to take them for granted, until they became invisible. But consider how difficult it could be for a militant atheist (or a humanist) to live in a society surrounded by so many symbols of religion. Where…
Hannah Arendt’s warning of the ‘banality of evil’ reveals how the routinisation of abortion masks its human cost In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious architects of the Nazi Holocaust, was tried in Jerusalem. The German intellectual, Hannah Arendt, went to Jerusalem to report on the trial. While the world expected to…
We need the love of others in this world to help us bridge the chasm, writes Penelope Middelboe An elderly aunt, Joan, whom I knew very well, died recently from old age. She was 91. Her sudden death after a decent lunch, whilst being helped into bed for a rest by her carers, took us…
Q: My husband and I got a divorce because my husband had an affair. Why doesn’t the Church agree with me that it was his fault and grant my annulment? Why is my Church siding with him? A: I’m very sorry you went through such a painful experience. But with respect to your specific question, I…
In the movie The English Patient there’s a very heartwarming scene. A number of people from various countries are thrown together by circumstance in an abandoned villa in post-war Italy. Among them are a young nurse, attending to an English pilot who’s been badly burned in an air crash, and a young Asian man whose…
Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well Luke 17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. Luke 17:12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, Luke 17:13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on…
At the end of his weekly public audience on September 24, Pope Leo XIV said: “Within the Church the month of October is dedicated in a special way to the Holy Rosary. Therefore, I invite everyone, throughout the coming month, to pray the Rosary each day for peace — personally, within families, and in communities.”…
St Paul reminds us: “We are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet enriching many; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:10). The Christian life is paradoxical. We can name sorrow honestly, yet still hold fast to hope. We rejoice not because all is well, for it is not, but because Christ is present,…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser