This Sunday’s Presider’s Page

At 6 p.m. tomorrow (Wed) The Tablet hosts a webinar with the priest and theologian James Alison offering the chance to see Catholicism with fresh eyes. This isn’t “gay theology” – it’s a…

Western People  27.8.2024 I may be wrong but I suspect that few of my readers took in the recent Electric Picnic, Ireland’s biggest outdoor festival. Just over a week or…

Inevitably, in the first rush of grief, we can over-egg the significance of the deaths of those who carry our hopes and dreams of the future. In 1881, when arguably…

An interesting address by Dermot Farrell, Bishop of Ossory, at the Conference with Laity and Priests in the Diocese of Ossory;
“Pope Francis is constantly putting his synodal vision of the church before us. The question he is asking, and that we should ask ourselves, is what kind of church is God calling the priests and all Catholics to be in the longer term – perhaps less self-referential and more a community of missionary disciples, less clerical and more synodical, “……

“We have fallen off a cliff edge in regard to vocations to the priesthood.   Many speak of a crisis in this regard…….This time of reduced numbers may well afford us an opportunity to be creative and to reimagine the institutional church.”

The Divine in the Ordinary Amos and John Moriarty: John Moriarty came to mind last weekend as I listened to Amos. The maverick and the whimsical struck me. Somehow I…

More Rumours of Angels The delights of a frosty morning: These mornings seem eerie. The Tolka River holds its breath. I am suspicious of the quietness. The heron appears sometimes….