The sun was shining, and the streets were full of colour. Not always what you would associate with strolling about Belfast city centre, but that was my experience yesterday.
There was a parade of the trade unions, marking May Day, with a brass band and a peaceful, colourful ensemble of participants. Music was emanating from City Hall, where runners were pouring in to collect their numbers for tomorrow’s Belfast City Marathon. And in various locations, street performers on hand for the Festival of Fools were entertaining passers-by with everything from sword-swallowing to comedy acrobatics.
Continue reading ‘Be Playful! Activism from the Kitchen Table on 5 May’
Today we continue with the third of Fr Michael Bennett’s guest posts on the Irish Catholic Church, A Look from Afar. Here, Fr Michael argues that establishing an agenda for justice, peace and integrity of creation (JPIC) is absolutely essential in today’s Ireland.
Fr Michael urges us to take another look at some of the ideas developed in Social Justice Ireland’s An Agenda for a New Ireland. He contrasts the lack of debate about how we might construct a ‘common good’ for social, political and religious life in Ireland, with our obsessive focus on the private sexual lives of celebrities and politicians.
Continue reading ‘Crisis in the Irish Catholic Church: A Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation Agenda by Fr Michael Bennett’
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 Smyth summed up SJI’s recommendations this way,
Continue reading ‘Social Justice Ireland & ‘An Agenda for a New Ireland’’
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 values. Last month, it was revealed that Beck’s staff is now ‘funding opposition research and internet attack campaigns’ against Christian pastors who disagree with his vision of America.
Continue reading ‘Fox News on Witch Hunt for Christian Pastors?’
‘There’s probably more theology in that film clip than in the book of Romans.’
Rev. Steve Stockman, the minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast, said words to that effect to those who had gathered there yesterday evening for what was billed as ‘The Man in Black – a Service Built around the worship songs, life and testimony of Johnny Cash.’
Continue reading ‘Johnny Cash for Holy Week: An Evening at Fitzroy Presbyterian’
Xoliswa Sithole – an accomplished film maker who was once proud to call Zimbabwe her home – has produced a wrenching documentary chronicling the economic and political melt-down of her country, and the devastating impact this is having on children.
The BBC aired the documentary, ‘Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children,’ earlier this month. When I watched the film, I was struck by the grim resignation and stoicism with which the children she worked with seemed to accept their fate. They knew their childhoods had been stolen.
Continue reading ‘Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children: Review of the Documentary by Xoliswa Sithole’
Gene Stoltzfus, the founding director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, died Wednesday March 10, 2010, of a heart attack while cycling near his home in Fort Frances, Ontario. Christian Peacemaker Teams aim to ‘get in the way’ of war and violence. They have been prominent recently in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Stolzfus was a Mennonite who embodied some of the best qualities of that pacifist strand of Christianity. Simon Barrow, co-director of the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia, said of Stolzfus,
Continue reading ‘Gene Stolzfus: In Memory of a Christian Peacemaker’
Saturday’s Irish Times outlines the options facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in their efforts to pass health care reform in the United States. I’m an American, and I have followed the somewhat tedious rounds of debates with both amazement and despair.
Many Americans believe they have the best health care system in the world. That’s what the Republicans have said, although they also have said that the system is broken. Then there is Fox News, whose presenters continually shout about how horrible ‘socialised’ health care is in the UK or Canada.
Continue reading ‘US Health Care Debate – Christian Options?’
There is more to the Catholic Church than sex abuse scandals.
Although that is a rather obvious point, in contemporary Ireland, it’s a fact that could quite easily get overlooked. Of course Catholics and other concerned citizens are right to criticise the Catholic Church and its failings in the Irish context. But a recent book edited by Prof. Linda Hogan, Applied Ethics in a World Church: the Padua Conference (Orbis, 2008), is a timely reminder not only of the global scope of Catholicism, but also of a spirit of critical enquiry that is informing new ethical developments among Catholic theologians.
Prof. Hogan is Head of the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. Her edited volume is based on a conference that drew more than 400 Catholic moral theologians to Padua, Italy in 2006, to participate in what she calls ‘the first international, cross-cultural conversation on theological ethics’ (p.1). The book, which has won the prestigious Catholic Book Award from the Catholic Press Association of the USA and Canada, features 30 chapters by a genuinely international panel of scholars.
Continue reading ‘Linda Hogan Book Review: Applied Ethics in a World Church’
It’s a long way from Clare to Checkpoint 300. Barbara Walshe, a native of Co. Clare and a student on the Master’s in Reconciliation Studies programme at our Belfast campus, has recently returned from a stint with the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine (EAPPI).
Walshe shared her experiences at a public seminar at our campus on Tuesday. Her story is at once fascinating, depressing, and inspiring. Walshe was based in Bethlehem this past summer with EAPPI. Her main task was monitoring Checkpoint 300. Palestinians, mainly male construction workers, must queue here daily to pass from Bethlehem to work in Jerusalem.
Continue reading ‘Barbara Walshe in the West Bank: Witness at Checkpoint 300′
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