The controversy surrounding Eurovision 2024 led me to recall Fr Michael Paul Gallagher SJ’s commentary on St Paul’s visit to Athens. On arrival, St Paul “was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). Yet despite this, he searched for something in the Athenians’ worship of pagan deities that he…
Few theologians have ever gone out of their way to meet with the Vatican’s doctrinal watch body, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, preferring, with good reason, to give it a wide berth. That is precisely what I did, however, in my capacity as president of the 800 member European Society for Catholic…
Church, Interrupted – Havoc & Hope: The Tender Revolt of Pope Francis by John Cornwell (Chronicle Prism, £21.99/€25.00) You know you are in the hands of a master author and story-teller when you open a book by John Cornwell. Readers may be familiar with his best-seller A Thief in the Night: the Death of John Paul I (1989),…
What seems like disaster can turn out to be a gift of Faith, writes Fr Eamonn Conway In 2009, I was diagnosed with a nasty form of eye cancer. Given that there was a likelihood of metastasis, my oncologist said that from now on my life would be a kind of high-wire act. He…
A few years ago I was invited by Fr Seán Deegan, a Kiltegan priest, to conduct workshops in the Diocese of Juina in the Mato Grosso, Brazil. This Amazonian diocese has 140,000 Catholics scattered over a region one and a half times the size of Ireland. It has 19 priests, some of whom are on loan.…
In recent years, Mary Immaculate College students have volunteered at a school for children with special needs in Siliguri, India. It is a small operation run by religious sisters and struggles to survive. Just across the road is a highly-resourced fee-paying boarding school. Over the entrance is a giant crest containing a cross, an image…
The Pope in Ireland Pope Francis is a Pope for a truly global Church, writes Prof. Eamonn Conway The World Meeting of Families coincides with news of shameful sex crimes by clergy against children and vulnerable adults in the USA in recent past decades. At first glance it might seem that little progress has…
Religion would be a second-class subject if new proposals take effect, writes Fr Eamonn Conway The latest proposal from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) will make it very difficult for patrons and boards of management of Catholic primary schools to fulfill their legal and statutory obligation to uphold their schools’ ethos. The…
Attempts to blame the Church for the death of a new religious education curriculum are wide of the mark, writes Prof. Eamonn Conway
Though we fear it, for Christians death is a necessary and even a welcome moment, writes Prof. Eamonn Conway