Personal Profile Fr John Harris OP was set on the path to the priesthood from the age of seven, and hasn’t looked back since. Elected last year as the provincial for the Dominicans in Ireland, he sees his task as being to encourage his brethren to preach the Gospel. “My vocation story is very boring,”…
For 15 years, I taught a course entitled The Theology of God. The students in that course were predominately seminarians preparing for ministry, along with a number of lay students who were preparing to serve as ministers in various capacities in their churches. I would always teach what the curriculum called for: the key biblical…
The World of Books Sarah Cecilia Harrison: Artist, Social Campaigner, and City Councillor edited by Margarita Cappock (Four Courts Press for Dublin City Council, €27.95/£25.00; paperback €22.95/£20.00) Years ago when I was researching the interaction of the Irish cultural revival with other Irish national movements, the name of Miss S.C. Harrison was one I came…
Dr Anca Sincan tells of the women who kept Romania’s clandestine Greek Catholic Church going under communist repression, writes Jason Osborne Catholics have never been under any illusion about persecution as part and parcel of the Faith, but World War II and the surge of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe in the mid-20th Century…
Notebook This summer will mark my 10th anniversary as the priest in Newcestown. This longevity in the parish is a gift. Now, when I celebrate a funeral Mass, more likely than not I will know the person whose funeral I am celebrating. It’s not that I eulogise the dead, but it helps to have known…
Starchaser by Jacintha Mullins (Veritas, €12.99/£10.99) This is a book very much of the moment, but with a long life before it. Jacinta teaches in a primary school, the Midwest School for the Deaf in Limerick. This book arose out of the experience of the school losing two pupils. Her moving and effective pages were…
Pope warns against digital media addiction in Lenten message The Vatican released Pope Francis’ Lenten message last Thursday in which the Pope recommended that Lent 2022 can be a time to put down the smartphone and encounter those in need face to face. “Let us not grow tired of fighting against concupiscence, that weakness which…
Overcome our argumentative age with generosity, says Bishop McKeown Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown warned that we must heed Christ’s call to a “spirit of generosity” to overcome our “argumentative age”. In his homily Sunday 20, Bishop McKeown said that Jesus offers us the grace to rise above “the desire for revenge or sectarianism”. He…
I thought Vladimir Putin might have been happy for now to annex the two breakaway republics in Ukraine and hope to get away with it as with Crimea. Tuning in to early news bulletins last Thursday I found I was wrong. It seems he wants the whole of Ukraine, and is prepared to see widespread…
Editor’s Comment There are few things that test faith as much as suffering and the presence of evil in the world. The Christian tradition has always recognised the reality of evil as a profound temptation against the Gospel message. The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by Faith.…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Michael Kelly