Questions of Faith In the last decade, deacons in Ireland have become more commonplace, especially as priestly numbers continue to decline. But who are these robed men that stand beside the priest at Mass – and what do they do? The name deacon means ‘minister’ or ‘servant’ and the term is explicitly mentioned in 1…

Questions of Faith Modern conceptions of the Devil often depict him as an evil, red-tinged, horned fiend, relishing in the torture of lost souls as he malevolently impales the damned with his pitchfork. This, however, is not how Satan has always been perceived; the Church provides us with a much richer account of who the…

Questions of Faith Deism is the belief that a supernatural entity created the universe, but that this being does not intervene in its creation. The Church describes it like this: “Some admit that the world was made by God but as by a watchmaker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself…

Questions of Faith It’s becoming more and more popular nowadays for people to opt for cremation instead of burial. There are plenty of reasons why this has become the norm: it’s cheaper than a traditional funeral; non-religious don’t want to be buried in a graveyard; some choose it because of their phobia of waking up…

Questions of Faith Plenty of secular accounts pertaining to morality co-exist in the world today – some hold that objective moral values are real; others that moral actions can be reduced down to evolutionary behaviour; and many that morals don’t exist at all but have been created to allow for a functioning society. In opposition…

Questions of Faith Many Christians today – usually fundamentalists or those of the evangelical tradition – believe that God created the world in six days, in accordance with the Genesis account described in the Bible. This well-known passage outlines a six-day schema of creation, concluding on the seventh day that God rested. “By the seventh…

Questions of Faith The question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God has been a point of contention among different religious denominations and various scholars. It has been suggested that the sheer disparities theologically and philosophically between both religions indicate that its adherents must be praying to separate deities. It seems, however, that…

Questions of Faith It’s a safe scientific assumption to make that humans have been roaming the earth for at least 100,000 years – but if Christ only appeared 2,000 years ago, what happened to all those who died before he arrived? It would be unfair for the pre-Christian deceased to go to Hell for eternity,…

Questions of Faith In Ireland, the word celebration is almost always associated with drinking alcohol, whether it be a birthday, wedding or even a funeral. Indeed, the Irish are known for their incredible ability to withstand imbibing vast amount of drinks on a night out, and still be able to tell the story lucidly the…