Fr Paddy Byrne One of the fundamental tasks given to every Christian is to spread the Good News. In our Catholic tradition, this task has been extremely well-served for centuries. Communication is key to the life and mission of our Church. I know too ‘actions speak louder than words’ –actions of kindness, compassion, inclusion…
Fr Éamonn Fitzgibbon It is just 12 months since the Government launched ‘Realising our Rural Potential: The Action Plan for Rural Development’. This Plan generated hope and optimism in many rural communities as it outlined 270 actions to support rural Ireland. However, much of this positivity has been dented by the recently launched National Planning Framework…
There is a growing concern that young people are just sliding into the sacrament, writes Susan Gately Wexford-based Fr Paddy Banville attracted publicity recently after calling a public meeting to address the issue of the forthcoming Confirmation ceremony in the parish. When the students enrolled for the Sacrament, Fr Banville, the administrator of the…
Eight months after ordering priests in a Nigerian diocese to pledge their obedience to the Pope and accept the bishop that now-retired Pope Benedict XVI had named for them, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the disputed bishop. Bishop Peter Ebere Okpaleke, who since 2012 has been prevented from exercising his ministry as bishop of…
Well-known TV personality Norah Casey has taken on the task of raising around €15 million to finance the WMOF in August. Speaking on RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live, the former dragon said Pope Francis had given her back her faith. “Like most Irish people I have a chequered history with Catholicism,” she said, going from “cradle Catholic”…
Pro-life organisations have scorned claims by the chair of the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment that the committee could not find a single medical expert to make the case for retaining Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn. Speaking on RTÉ radio, Senator Catherine Noone said: “Nobody was willing to come forward, none who were…
Letter from Rome As President John F. Kennedy famously said after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, more or less paraphrasing Tacitus, “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”. The odd thing from a media point of view is that it’s often precisely the opposite way around – failure is…
An order of nuns has withdrawn from an especially violent city in Mexico after the parents and sister of one of the women religious was kidnapped and killed. The Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, where two priests were murdered this month, said in a statement that the nuns from the Comunidad Guadalupano (Guadalupe Community) had withdrawn because…
The Department of Education circular introducing new rules insisting that schools provide alternative tuition for students who wish to opt out of religious instruction will have the effect of making religion an optional subject, and place huge additional pressures on state schools, according to the Chief Executive of the Cork Education and Training Board, Timothy…
The European Union has become too focused on narrow economic goals, writes Ben Ryan I’ve finally found common ground with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. I can finally come out in public as someone who also likes to think of the EU as a “teleological construction”. Of course, Johnson is learning, as I’ve long experienced,…
Susan Gately
Colm Fitzpatrick
John L. Allen Jr.