For many, religion can be inspirational and enhancing, bringing out the best in people as they try to live in a harmonious relationship with God, each other and nature. But it can turn sour if infected by extremism, and that draws the media like a magnet. Cults are a particularly ugly manifestation of this, a…
Q: A divorced, annulled Catholic friend of mine recently got engaged to another divorced Catholic, who said her previous marriage was ruled “lacks proper form” by the Church. What does this mean? Are they able to marry in the Catholic Church? A: Even as a canon lawyer, it’s impossible to draw firm conclusions about another…
Letter of the week The extreme hatred of all things Catholic… Dear Editor, Recently in the media was a story of a local elections candidate and her querying of Dublin City Council expenditure on a statue of the Sacred Heart at a city centre location. Hardly a huge hole in the council budget, the reason…
The Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, which began on Tuesday June 4, at the unusual venue of Richmond Barracks in Inchicore with the visiting JACK Quartet and Irish clarinettist Carol McGonnell, had an interesting mix by US and Irish composers including Ruth Crawford Seeger, Juri Seo and Belfast-born Ann Cleare who holds a PhD from…
Notebook The ‘Big Day’ has come and gone: Confirmation Day in my parish, that is. was one of those pastors fortunate to be assigned a ceremony in the Easter season, so we celebrated the sacrament in Castlehaven and Myross Parish on April 26, the day after my birthday. I feel lucky to have had such…
Charlie Camosy Every convert’s path to the Catholic faith is unique, and some come to the Church through more winding paths than others. Jeffrey L. Morrow, currently a professor of theology at Seton Hall University’s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology (ICSST), recently spoke about his journey from Judaism to Christianity to Catholicism and what…
The Sunday Gospel Gn 3:9-15 Ps 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 2 Cor 4:13—5:1 Mk 3:20-35 You’re in good company. The Scriptures this Sunday show what Jesus went through in his hometown – and they offer us a valuable perspective. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus hears some criticism and name-calling that is downright blasphemous, with relatives claiming…
Berlin (KNA) Papyrus experts have deciphered a manuscript fragment as the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. They dated the manuscript to the 4th to 5th century, as the Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin announced on Tuesday. The Gospel tells of the childhood of Jesus and…
Brendan O’Regan