In just a little over a month, the curtain will rise on a keenly anticipated Synod of Bishops on Synodality in Rome. Though notoriously difficult to define, ‘synodality’ generally refers to the idea of the whole Church journeying together, with members listening to one another in establishing priorities and policies. To date, much of the…
Q: We’ve been wondering about the wording in the prayer used for those who attend Sunday Mass virtually. The phrases: “Come AT LEAST spiritually into my heart” and “I love You AS IF You were already there” don’t reflect good theology. Don’t we believe that the Bible and our faith assure us of God’s constant…
Ancestral Voices in Irish Politics: Judging Dillon and Parnell, by Paul Bew (Oxford University Press, £25.00/ €29.50) The great Irish constitutional nationalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, with its twin aims of land reform and Home Rule, has been largely disregarded and uncelebrated in the Ireland that emerged from the 1916…
Fr Dawid Aksenczuk was ordained to the priesthood for the diocese of Down and Connor on Sunday, August 27, in St Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast. Bishop Donal McKeown, the diocese’s apostolic administrator, told Fr Aksenczuk that his ordination comes at “a time of renewal and reimagining” for the diocese. The northern diocese is currently awaiting the…
Fragments of Truth: Pallottines in Kenya & Tanzania, with the Rwanda Dossier, volumes I & II, by Donal F. McCarthy SCA (Pallottines Ireland, Dundrum, Dublin; the copies are on a print on demand system and priced accordingly) The Pallottines are a religious congregation who are more formally known as the Society of the Catholic Apostolate (Societas…
In the foreword to a new booklet by a conservative group criticising Pope Francis’s looming Synod of Bishops on Synodality, American Cardinal Raymond Burke has slammed the process surrounding the synod, calling it deeply harmful and potentially schismatic. Cardinal Burke, a hero to the traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church, has been a frequent Francis…
A friend of mine shares this story. He was an only child. When he was in his late twenties, still single, building a successful career and living in the same city as his mother and father, his father died, leaving his mother widowed. His mother, who had centred her life on her family and on…
St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh was packed to capacity well before Sunday’s 11am Mass began marking 150 years since the dedication of the church which dominates the skyline of Ireland’s ecclesiastical capital. Local parishioners — brimming with pride for the place where they made their First Holy Communion, were married, had their children baptised and…
Sound of Freedom (15A) Tim Ballard is a former CEO of the Nazarene Fund. This was set up to help persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. He’s also the founder of an organisation called Operations. Underground Railroad which specialises in rescuing child victims of sex traffickers. Jim Caviezel, who took the role of Jesus in Mel…
In times of deep crisis in Church and State in the past, God raised up heroic visionaries, writes Msgr Dan O’Connor St Benedict, Patron of Europe, and his twin sister Scholastica lived at a time of civil unrest and upheaval in the Church. They became lights of hope for Christ’s people, through their monastic foundations…
John L. Allen Jr.
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Aubrey Malone