Category: Letters

Remembering the work of Mary Aikenhead

Dear Editor, The Religious Sisters of Charity, an order heretofore embroiled in contention regarding the ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital, has relinquished its role in its health care group having no role whatsoever in the management or governance in relation to the new national maternity hospital and the St Vincent’s Hospital Group (SVHG)…

Funerals must be conducted with proper respect

Dear Editor, I read with interest Jason Osborne’s article ‘The changing face of funerals’ [The Irish Catholic – October 28, 2021] arising from his interview with Joseph Behan (Hibernian Funerals), in particular Mr Behan’s comments on cremation. For hundreds of years cremations were frowned upon and even illegal going back as far as Charlemagne in 789. It was…

Dearth of evening Masses for workers

Dear Editor, I am a full-time worker with regular hours who doesn’t finish before 5pm, and prior to the pandemic I had little difficulty locating an evening Mass to attend on weekdays. Since the churches have re-opened however, I have found to my dismay that there is now a dearth of evening Masses (7pm-7.30pm) in…

Evil is not an abstract phenomenon

Dear Editor, The title of Fr Sean Smith’s item in your 26/08/2021 issue was ‘We still speak about keeping the Faith as if it were something, instead of a relationship with someone’. David Quinn’s article in your 14/10/2021 issue is titled ‘The Church has underestimated the reality of evil’ and discusses the report on child…

Pity the poor women of Afghanistan…

Dear Editor, thank you for your considered and may I say temperate response to the cringy attention-seeking comparison by Fr Roy Donovan of the Church to the Taliban (The Irish Catholic, October 14, 2021). In Jason Osborne’s article, Fr Donovan is at least clear in admitting that he used the extreme language precisely in order…

Recognition of religion needed for Europe’s moral change

Dear Editor, We are being lectured ad nauseam that the truly dark period of our recent history has been superseded by an enlightened and liberal era. However, the hall marks of social behaviourism in this secularised paradise making for daily media reportage presents an unpleasant and disturbing reality. Children, according to a Garda report were suspects in…

Excessive wealth has devastating effects

Dear Editor, As I listened to what it says in the papers after the news this morning – Saturday, September 25 – I heard it said that so many of our politicians are millionaires. Then later I heard on playback two good ordinary citizens share their sad stories of being asked to vacate their apartments…

History cannot be unlived

Dear Editor, thank you for your courageous words in your timely ‘Editor’s Comment’ on the controversy provoked by the president’s refusal to attend the ecumenical service in Armagh [The Irish Catholic, September 23, 2021]. The commemoration (not celebration) of partition was always going to be something that had to be handled sensitively – a fact…

Review of abortion legislation must address alternatives

Dear Editor, In September 1983 the Eighth Amendment was passed by the Irish people with 66.9% support. Despite that clear decision, a large number of pro-abortion campaigners persistently ignored that mandate, not for three years, but for more than three decades. In 2018, following a campaign in which the Irish public were misled by pro-abortion…