Shake-up may see students leave historic home EXCLUSIVE Radical plans that would see Maynooth seminary leaving the college’s neogothic buildings in favour of a new purpose-built home on the same campus are being considered by the hierarchy, Primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin has told The Irish Catholic. The proposal is part of a radical shake-up…
Human rights are a Christian creation – leading historian
Modern liberalism and secularism depend on Christianity to make sense, a leading historian has said. Although modern Ireland may believe itself to have become a profoundly secular society it remains as shaped by the legacy of Christianity as when it was a very religious society, Tom Holland said, describing Christianity as “a huge depth charge…
Maynooth: Looking to a renewed future
Ireland’s bishops have big plans for the pontifical university, writes Greg Daly Buried near the end of a long and thoughtful address in Rome’s Irish Pontifical College a couple of weeks ago on the relevance of St John Henry Newman in Ireland today, Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had something startling to say about St…
Catholics must not be afraid to bear witness to their Faith
We must find the courage to speak clearly, a Dutch cardinal tells Greg Daly When the Irish Catholic Doctors’ Learning Network decided to build its annual conference this month around the theme of ‘Powers and Powerlessness: Responding to the Challenges of Modern Healthcare’, one obvious potential speaker was the Cardinal Archbishop of Utrecht, Wim Eijk.…
No love lost over Dublin’s St Valentine Shrine medal scam
Dublin’s St Valentine’s Shrine has warned against an internet scam around medals falsely linked with the shrine. Highlighting how a website is selling medals of St Valentine purporting to contain soil from Whitefriar Street Church, which houses the Shrine of St Valentine, Carmelite authorities have denied that any soil has been taken from the church.…
Clergy to blame for statues’ destruction – missionary
Priests and bishops who have stirred up contempt for the religious traditions of indigenous South America people are partly to blame for the desecration of religious images, an Irish priest from the Jesuits’ Paraguayan province has said. Commenting on how statues of a pregnant woman, identified as symbols of life and ‘Our Lady of the…
Ireland must be ‘land of welcomes’ for new foreign clergy – bishop
Irish parishioners need to get used to the fact that their priests will increasingly be coming from abroad, one of the country’s most senior bishops has said. Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly insisted that priests and religious coming to Ireland from overseas to minister to alleviate the vocations crisis should be welcomed with open arms and helped…
A magnificent journey of faith
Mission Sunday Supplement Missionaries succeed when they make missionary disciples, Greg Daly is told It won’t have escaped the notice of regular readers of The Irish Catholic that time and again, whenever there’s a crisis somewhere around the world – Venezuela, Sudan, Hong Kong, wherever – Irish missionaries on the ground are able to describe…
Listening to the edges of the Church
The Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region may seem almost irrelevant to many Irish Catholics: sure, Pope Francis talks often of growth in the Church coming from the peripheries, but there are peripheries and there are peripheries. Austen Ivereigh’s commonwealmagazine.org piece ‘When the Amazon meets the Tiber’ should help banish such scepticism, working well…
Pope’s pick for new bishop defies talk of diocesan demise
The appointment of Bishop Michael Duignan to head the Diocese of Clonfert is “hugely significant” as a vote of confidence by Pope Francis in the future of the diocese, worshippers at the new bishop’s ordination Mass have been told. Preaching in St Brendan’s Cathedral, Loughrea, Msgr Cathal Geraghty noted how the initial announcement of Bishop…