Dear Editor, As usual this week (7/11/13) I read The Irish Catholic and got a lot out of it. However I was surprised to read the letter from Margaret Ahearne denouncing relics. Her ignorance is appalling! The Church has venerated relics even from the time of the catacombs to give us hope in the work…
Category: Opinion
Relics are precious gifts from God
Dear Editor, I wish to respond to Margaret Ahearne’s letter regarding relics (CI 7/11/13). I am afraid she is very much mistaken that the use of relics is not biblical. In fact, the concept that contact with the bones or other objects once belonging to saints can facilitate miracles goes right back through the Gospel (where…
Facing the challenge to forgive
Dear Editor, Aubrey Malone titles his review of the film Philomena ‘The Sins of the Mothers’ (IC 31/10/13). He clearly sees sin only in the young mothers like Philomena Lee who were locked in the Magdalen Homes and not in how they were treated. He sees the film as an attack on ‘the Church’ which…
Surrogacy fragments the family
Breda O'BrienThe Irish Times carried an extraordinary story recently of a woman who got pregnant on her lunchtime break, using anonymously donated sperm from the Danish firm, Cryos. What gave the story an added twist is that the woman is adopted, and had spent her whole life wondering “what it was like to look like somebody”.…
Are we missing something?
Globalisation is not something that is done to us, it reflects our choices, writes John Bruton
Challenge to re-engage young adults in faith
Michael KellyI had occasion to be in radio studios over the weekend with Oireachtas members from Fianna Fáil, the Labour party and Sinn Féin. One of the subjects was a poll conducted by the Sunday Independent and Today FM on the attitudes of Irish people in their 30s towards morality in general and religion in particular.…
Dealing with media is a priority
Dear Editor, David Kelly (Letters IC 7/11/13) questions the need for the Church, as the body of Christ, to learn how to deal with the media and argues (quite correctly) that a bishop’s first duty is to his flock. It is to be argued, however, that Mr Kelly poses a dilemma for the modern bishop…
The ubiquity of ‘partner’
Mary KennyI rang the hairdresser to say I had to be 10 minutes late for the hairdo: my husband is disabled, I explained, and I had to pick up some medications for him which delayed me. That was fine, and as the young woman was cutting my hair she asked chattily: “So, how long has your…
Where God pitched his tent
"What were you expecting, lady?” asked the gun-toting Israeli soldier of the late Maeve Binchy. “A Renaissance table set for 13?” Maeve was visiting the bare church at the site of the Last Supper in Jerusalem and was stunned to find that it didn’t resemble what she had imagined. Her belief in the “special Irish…
Handling resentment in our lives
Many of us, I suspect, know about the work of the renowned anthropologist, Rene Girard and the dissemination of his insights through the work of his student, Gil Bailie. With gratitude to them, I pass along one of their insights, an invaluable look at how we try to handle resentment in our lives. When astronauts…