Expert children’s bookseller and debut author, Lorraine Levis releases a manual for parents and educators to help children develop a love of reading Of everything in this book, the opinion I express here could be one of the most controversial … I think children should play more video games. I hope you will stick with…
The Identitarians: The Movement against Globalism and Islam in Europe by José Pedro Zúquete (University of Notre Dame Press, £32.00/$39.00) Frank Litton We live in an age of adjectives. While going back over past controversies, it is hard not to note how often adjectives are deployed to deflect, or halt argument. The commentariat are less concerned…
Germany’s Catholic bishops agreed this week to a uniform system for compensation payments to abuse survivors. Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, announced the agreement September 24 at the end of the bishops’ plenary meeting in Fulda, central Germany. Under the new system, survivors of abuse by Church workers will be entitled…
The story of the Church and individual clergymen during the civil conflict in the North deserves to be told, writes Michael Kelly Forty-one years ago this week, on September 29, 1979 Pope John Paul II travelled to Killineer, near Drogheda in Co. Louth and made a passionate plea for peace. It was the first day…
The Bible. A Story that makes sense of Life by Andrew Ollerton (Hodder & Stoughton, £14. 99; available in bookshops this month) The Bible, from Genesis to the Epistles, provides the common ground for belief for Christians of all tradition, East and West. And yet again, from East to West, they have drawn such varied notions…
Letter from Rome Although the drama triggered by the sudden fall from grace of Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu is far from over, things nonetheless have reached the stage where it’s also possible to stand back and ponder the bigger picture. I say “possible”, not necessarily likely, because frankly the story is just too riveting at…
Irish Catholic charities providing essential relief on the frontlines during Covid-19 received a “significant donation” of €500,000 from the The Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation (AGCF). Bishop Dermot Farrell, Chair of the Council for Finance and General Purposes of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, expressed “deep gratitude and indebtedness” for AGCF’s “magnanimous donation”. “The Albert Gubay…
We cannot continue to see the planet and its resources as things for us to use as we wish writes Fr Hugh O’Donnell SDB Twenty years ago, in response to our ‘disfigurement’ of the earth, Pope John Paul talked of humans standing at the edge of an abyss. The only way we can avoid going…
In response to a question by columnist David Quinn at a NPHET press briefing, Dr Ronan Glynn referred to Mass as “less important” in the context of the pandemic. Following on from Mr Quinn’s question about why Dublin appears as an “outlier” in terms of the harsher restrictions re-imposed here, compared to those currently in…
Everyday Philosophy We’re all biased. All of us believe things for bad reasons. We believe things because of wrong assumptions we never question, because of people we want to impress, because of patterns of thought that are evolutionarily useful but not apt for finding the truth. There’s no getting around our bias: the best we…
Michael Kelly
Peter Costello
John L. Allen Jr.
Ben Conroy