Dear Editor, Perhaps the most interesting aspect of your interview with Archbishop Eamon Martin this week (IC 20/6/2019) was not his comments on the country’s smallest dioceses, or even his openness to a national synod in a few years, but his barely veiled suggestion that the Archdiocese of Dublin be dismantled to make the Church…
The Notebook Fr Vincent Shelock “There were people of all ages, gathered ‘round the gable wall”, so begins Dana’s wonderful hymn telling the story of the Knock Apparition of August 1879. It’s a lovely image of Church – people of all ages, gathered, content to be with one another and respectful. I often think…
Christians must respond to migration crisis humanely – Pope The Vatican recognises how difficult it is for nations to manage the flow of migrants and refugees, but one thing is certain: “We must respond in a humane manner, a Christian manner, and we must try to help people, not harm them,” said the Vatican foreign…
US Cardinal Raymond Burke has resigned from the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, saying it has become “more and more identified with the political program” of Steve Bannon. In a letter posted on his Twitter feed, Cardinal Burke said yesterday (June 25) he had urged the institute to return to its original purpose of promoting the respect…
Pope Francis said today that there is no room for selfishness in the Christian life, pointing to the example of the lives of the early Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. “The community of believers banishes individualism in favour of sharing and solidarity. There is no place for selfishness if you are a Christian,”…
Dioceses must be fit for mission, says Primate The future of Ireland’s smallest dioceses is coming under increased Vatican scrutiny with a policy to withhold appointing bishops once a small diocese becomes vacant. The Irish Catholic understands at least three of the smallest dioceses will not receive new bishops and will likely be amalgamated…
The Government’s Climate Action Plan lacks vital practicalities and doesn’t allow for necessary incentives and infrastructural changes to enable Ireland to play its part in tackling the global climate emergency, Ireland’s leading eco-theologian has said. “We’ve had so much of aspirational things for the last 25 years,” Columban Fr Seán McDonagh told The Irish Catholic,…
What happened to former Garda Majella Moynihan – pressurised into yielding her baby son for adoption, back in the 1980s, after she became pregnant out of wedlock – is distressing and upsetting. And it’s certainly unjust that women were stigmatised when this happened while the fathers were seldom held responsible for a pregnancy they had…
In recent years, Mary Immaculate College students have volunteered at a school for children with special needs in Siliguri, India. It is a small operation run by religious sisters and struggles to survive. Just across the road is a highly-resourced fee-paying boarding school. Over the entrance is a giant crest containing a cross, an image…
Some years ago, a dedicated, active, hardworking, popular priest who ran marathons for the hospice in his spare time, found himself experiencing something he had not anticipated, and did not recognise. He described those days as a time of “crisis in my ministry…my work was consuming me. I was too busy. Self-care and time off…
Greg Daly
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan