Grandparents can help children to understand the Faith and see that people must be valued for who they are, not simply what they can do, Elphin’s Bishop Kevin Doran has said. Speaking at the national pilgrimage of the Catholic Grandparents’ Association to Knock Shrine, Bishop Doran said that with today’s harsh economic realities causing parents…
Late medieval Dublin had a thriving religious life, Greg Daly is told With a dearth of men in formation for the priesthood in modern Ireland, and with the national seminary having made national headlines in recent years for decidedly undesirable reasons, it is perhaps unsurprising that different models of priestly formation are being pondered…
Although today may seem a time of darkness and difficulty for people without vision, prophets of doom are mistaken if they believe the Church in Ireland is condemned to a dark future, said Cloyne’s Bishop William Crean at a Mass last week to mark the centenary of St Colman’s Cathedral in Cloyne. Maintaining that today’s…
The healing of an Athlone woman with multiple sclerosis 30 years ago underlines the Eucharistic nature of the Apparition at Knock, the shrine’s rector has said. Speaking to The Irish Catholic about the medically inexplicable healing of Marion Carroll in September 1989, Fr Richard Gibbons described how Mrs Carroll had by her own account felt…
“May have been the losing side,” says Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the cult sci-fi show Firefly about his part in a recent civil war. “Still not convinced it was the wrong one.” Over a year on from 2018’s referendum on repealing Ireland’s constitutional protections for unborn human beings, it’s clear that for many of those…
EXCLUSIVE A martyred former student of the Irish College has been hailed as a modern example of Christian faith in action, and an important reminder of how religious freedom remains threatened across the world. Former President Mary McAleese has described Fr Ragheed Ganni [pictured], who was murdered along with three sub-deacons by Islamist militants…
Cardinal Pell is bound to be found innocent in a Church trial, writes Greg Daly It’s long been a point made by the Church’s more measured defenders that canon law allows the Church to take disciplinary action against its members when the State – for whatever reason – cannot act. Sometimes, as in the case…
Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has been accused of “speaking out of both sides of his mouth” after claiming that Christians in the Middle East have asked the Government not to speak up in their defence. Responding to a letter from Senator Neale Richmond about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa,…
The witness of good priests is the best form of vocational promotion, Bishop Phonsie Cullinan has said. Writing for The Irish Catholic, the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, who chairs the Irish Bishops’ Vocations Council, said that while more direct forms of vocational promotion are important, nothing rivals encountering committed clergy living their vocations in…
An emphasis on market forces is endangering theology’s place in Irish higher education, one of Ireland’s leading theologians has said, calling for the subject to be protected. “Theology is under threat in our higher education, there’s no question about that,” Prof. Eamonn Conway of Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College told The Irish Catholic. Explaining that students…