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How can we respond to violence?

Launch of Mary T. Malone’s new book (published by Columba Press) by Gina Menzies

We appeal to the Irish Bishops to add their voice to the growing
chorus now accepting the need for a married as well as a celibate priesthood
in our Church.

Nathan Chase has posted an article in praytellblog.com commenting on a recent circular letter, dealing with the “sign of peace” at Mass, from The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
In light of the many crises facing the church would it be fair to apply the old cliche about deck chairs being moved on the Titanic to this circular letter?

Pope Francis has lifted the suspension of Maryknoll Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, who was ordered 29 years ago to stop exercising his priestly ministry because he refused to give up his political position in Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

NCR editorial on the forthcoming Synod on the Family. Will it be something new or more of the same ?

Brendan Hoban in the Western People reflects on the decision of the Anglican communion to ordain women as bishops. He concludes that change will have to come in the Catholic Church as well , whether we like it or not. It will be measured and careful, but it will come because it has to come because the Catholic Church has to face the inevitable truth that the Eucharist is more important than celibacy.

High Time for ‘Elder Wisdom’ At a time when specialists in elder care in the UK are advocating the installation of CCTV in every room in every care home (to…

Brendan Hoban in the Western People maintains that if novelist John Updike believed that God could be found in a perfectly struck five-iron approach shot to the green, then surely there’s a spark of something other-worldly in the impossible swerve of a Messi or the immaculate balance of a Van Persie.

Seamus Ahearne muses about life in the context of the speculation about a new cabinet, the on again off again Garth Brooks concerts, Pat Rabbitte’s 20 second dismissal our own “new” missal and of course the letter from the bishops to the acp.
It reminds him that ‘the Word of God can be heard only when it is soaked up in human life and spoken with human accents.’

Eugene Cullen Kennedy is emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago. In the National Catholic Reporter he comments on what motivates the catholic bishops of the U.S.A. under the leadership of Pope Francis.
“We must feel for these men trained to be one kind of bishop now searching for some way to become another. For this and other blessings already beyond counting, we may be grateful to the loving God who gave us Francis.”