Letter of the week Dear Editor, As parishes face financial challenges, we must focus on reaching the next generation as Archbishop Martin says [The Irish Catholic – October 24, 2024], particularly at the parish level. The future of the Church depends on young people feeling not only welcome but also actively involved in the…
I was surprised to see a French supermarket – in the Bordeaux region – dedicate a whole section of its space to Hallowe’en costumes and assorted such decorations, from witches’ hats to spooky skeleton costumes. Marking Hallowe’en had never, previously, been a French custom: but it has become one now, thanks to American merchandising tactics.…
Fr Joshua J. Whitfield Dt 6:2-6 Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51 Heb 7:23-28 Mk 12:28b-34 The theology of this passage from Mark matters. Obviously so does its place within the extended debates of rabbis and theologians, arguments now millennia old. “Which is the first of all the commandments?” the scribe asks Jesus (Mk 12:28).…
Is a crime motivated by hate worse than one motivated by greed, or anger, or lust or indeed any one of the other deadly sins? What if motives are mixed, as they often are? Should the law treat a perpetrator more harshly depending on the motivation? I’m not convinced. Such questions became very pertinent last…
The 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, in some ways the country’s founding document, commits to cherishing ‘all the children of the nation equally’. The Thirty-first Amendment of the Constitution (Children) Act 2012 inserted clauses relating to children’s rights and the right and duty of the state to take child protection measures. This amendment was…
Child protection should unquestionably be paramount to any institution or organisation, but the moralising from some of the Government TDs of late rings hollow when you examine the ongoing failures they’ve been presiding over, with some seemingly incapable of finding solutions even after a decade in Government. The Government parties have suddenly become staunch champions…
From Pierre Teilhard de Chardin we get these words: “Because, my God, though I lack the soul-zeal and the sublime integrity of your saints, I yet have received from you an overwhelming sympathy for all that stirs within the dark mass of matter; because I know myself to be irremediably less a child of Heaven…
The veneration of St Bernadette’s relics in Ireland has seen thousands of the faithful gather, moved by the life of the young saint who once saw the Virgin Mary in Lourdes. This week with stops in Christ the King Cathedral in Mullingar, Oblate Church of Mary Immaculate in Inchicore, Dublin, Adam and Eve’s, Dublin, Kilmore…
I have lovely neighbours of whom I am very fond. However, I am not fond of their Hallowe’en display, which consists of two ugly witch-like figures sitting somewhat incongruously on deck chairs. A motion-activated sensor sets off vicious cackling and screaming while the figures bob up and down as though possessed, including in the middle…
The phrase “Ireland’s dark past” has well and truly entered the national consciousness. We come across it in articles, hear it on the radio, in TV documentaries, in movies and in general conversation. Our “dark past” used to refer mainly to the period from the foundation of the Irish State in 1922 until maybe the…
Mary Kenny
Brendan O’Regan
Brandon Scott
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn