By helping to weaken the clan system, Catholicism helped to pave the way for individual freedoms , writes David Quinn Western societies are ‘WEIRD’, that is to say, compared with almost everyone else who has ever lived, and is still alive today, we are much more individualistic and, in a certain way, non-conformist. Counter-intuitively, the…
The newly appointed bishop of Hong Kong gave a press conference Tuesday in which he said he believed that prudence and dialogue were a way forward in the challenges facing his diocese. Bishop-elect Stephen Chow Sau-yan told journalists May 18 that he did not think it would be wise to comment on especially controversial issues,…
Last time saw swimming discussed, but this week we take to the hills, writes Jason Osborne In the last feature, I discussed the mental and physical (and spiritual, too) benefits of open-sea swimming, but this week we’ll cast our eyes to the hills. One of the best things to come of the pandemic is a renewed appreciation of…
Maynooth College reflects on Covid-19: New Realities in Uncertain Times Ed. Jeremy Corley, Neil Xavier O’Donoghue and Salvador Ryan, foreword by Archbishop Eamon Martin (Messenger Publications, €9.95/£8.95) I write this on a morning when queues are forming outside Penney’s department store as people seek madly to mark what many are bound to see as the end…
A court has issued an order against a suspected loyalist agent holding him liable for the unlawful killing of three Catholics in Co. Armagh, according to The Irish News. The judgment has been issued in respect of Mid-Ulster loyalists Alan Oliver, Anthony McNeill and Thomas Harper. Mr Oliver, now a born-again Christian, is a suspected…
The Spanish bishops’ conference expressed concern that migrants were being used to exert political pressure after a sudden influx of migrants in the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla increased tensions between Spain and Morocco. In a statement released May 18, Auxiliary Bishop José Cobo of Madrid, head of the conference’s migration department, and Dominican…
The other week I was writing in these pages about the cultural meaning of the advent of printing in North America, which began not with the English puritans but with the Spanish clergy. This focused my mind on the fact that the national myths of the USA, but not of Canada or Mexico, manage to…
Letter from Rome Let’s face it, labour complaining about management isn’t exactly new. Even the Gospel of Matthew records a scene of workers who’ve toiled all day in a vineyard grousing that Johnny-come-latelys who showed up just before quitting time were getting the same wage … and, in a template for such disputes throughout time,…
Personal Profile On January 15, 1994, while she was praying before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration at a retreat, Marion Mulhall received her vocation. This vocation was and still is “to promote the priesthood at any price, to use my skills and experience in advertising for the good of the Church,” Ms Mulhall tells The…
Mindful Living In my last article we explored the lack of spiritual consciousness in modern secular society and the capacity of meditation as a universal practice to awaken and deepen personal spiritual experience, whether such experience finds expression in secular or religious terms. This way of looking at spirituality is very different to the traditional…
David Quinn
Peter Costello
John L. Allen Jr.
Ruadhán Jones