Fr Michael Bennett, a priest with the St Patrick’s Missionary Society based in Wicklow (Kiltegan Fathers), has contributed a guest post for this blog on the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church. The first instalment follows below. Fr Michael is currently serving in South Africa. He also has worked in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Fr Michael [...]
Archive | April, 2010
Hans Kung takes on the Pope
Criticisms of the Pope continue to pour in from all quarters, the latest coming from prominent theologian Hans Kung, who has written an open letter accusing the Pope of orchestrating a world-wide cover up of clerical sexual abuse and plunging the church into its worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. At this stage, such claims [...]
Is Northern Ireland Stuck with the Same Old Politics?: Platform for Change Meeting April 17
The Platform for Change will hold its next public meeting on Saturday April 17 in room G09 in the Lanyon Building at Queen’s University, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Coffee will be available from 9.30. The immediate topic of discussion is the upcoming Westminster election, and what the Platform for Change should say publicly about it. There [...]
Bishop Richard Clarke Elected President of Irish Council of Churches
Richard Clarke, Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare, was last month elected President of the Irish Council of Churches. His term will last until 2012. The April 9 edition of the Church of Ireland Gazette features Clarke’s election on its front page. It reports that Clarke says there are ‘three major tasks facing [...]
What Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the Orange Order have in Common
Prominent atheist campaigners Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have common cause with the Orange Order: Protesting against the Pope. Dawkins was the subject of a splashy headline in this week’s Sunday Times: Richard Dawkins calls for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI. The article said Dawkins, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested [...]
The Dissidents, the Car Bomb, and Policing and Justice
People in Northern Ireland woke up this morning to the news that dissident republicans had detonated a car bomb outside Palace Barracks in Holywood, the headquarters of MI5. The Real IRA claims responsibility for the bomb, designed as a protest against the devolution of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont. An elderly man [...]
Social Justice Ireland & ‘An Agenda for a New Ireland’
Earlier this week, the NGO Social Justice Ireland (SJI) published ‘An Agenda for a New Ireland,’ a 250-page socio-economic review of what went wrong in Ireland, what hasn’t changed, and what state and citizens might do to improve living on this island. The entire text of the document is available on-line. The Irish Times’ Jamie [...]
Murchadh Ó Madagáin Book Review: By the Word of their Testimony
What’s it like to be a priest in Ireland today? The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, raised that question in his recent ill-fated remarks about the Irish Catholic Church. While Williams created the greatest stir by his comment that the Irish Catholic Church had lost all credibility, he also expressed empathy for the [...]
Images from the Protest at the Pro Cathedral
On Easter Sunday I blogged about the protest at Dublin’s Pro Cathedral. Picketers placed children’s shoes on the altar to demonstrate their conviction that the Irish Catholic Church has not dealt adequately with the clerical sex abuse scandals. I’ve just received an email from a participant, who took some photographs of the event. These include [...]
Fox News on Witch Hunt for Christian Pastors?
For many people on this side of the Atlantic, I suspect their impressions of Fox News’ Glenn Beck are mediated through the spoofs of Daily Show comedian Jon Stewart, whose programme is aired on Channel 4. Beck identifies himself with Christian America, and is a self-proclaimed guardian of what he perceives to be America’s Christian [...]
About me
Welcome to Building a Church Without Walls, a website for people who are excited about how Christianity is developing in the 21st Century. I am a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Studies Programme at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast (the Irish School of Ecumenics).
Please note this is my personal site. All views are my own and are not representative of TCD.
