Cardinal Sean Brady has decided to stay on as the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Brady has been ‘reflecting’ on his position for the past two months. The controversy around his position was sparked when it was revealed that in 1975 he was involved in a situation in which clerics asked two teenagers [...]
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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 [...]
Easter Sunday in Ireland: Apology & Protest
The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, sparked controversy this weekend when the content of an interview that is scheduled to be broadcast Monday on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week was revealed. In it Williams proclaimed that the Catholic Church in Ireland had lost all credibility. In what served as an apt demonstration [...]
Enda McDonagh Book Review: Theology in Winter Light. Reflections for Good Friday
The Epilogue to Enda McDonagh’s latest book, Theology in Winter Light (Columba, 2010) is titled ‘A Crucified People.’ It opens with a quotation from the Gospel of Mark (15.33): And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour. McDonagh’s epilogue was written last November in the [...]
Gerry Adams: The Troubles & The Truth
Will we ever know the truth about Gerry Adams and the roles he played during the Troubles? Perhaps the more important question is whether we want to know. The publication in the Sunday Times of the first part in a serialisation of journalist Ed Moloney’s new book, Voices from the Grave, contains quotations from a [...]
Fr Brian D’Arcy and John Waters: Is Christ in our Collective Conversation on Clerical Abuse?
Unlike the Vatican, Irish Times columnist John Waters doesn’t accuse the media of a deliberate smear campaign against the Pope or the Catholic Church. But in an article headlined ‘Has Christ no role in resolving this crisis?’ in yesterday’s paper, Waters claims that, Media coverage of clerical sex abuse ignores that most Irish are believers [...]
Smearing the Pope? Vatican’s Defence is not Endearing
Yesterday the New York Times made the case that Pope Benedict knew more, and did more to cover-up the actions of paedophile priests, than has previously been supposed. This has prompted another offensive from the Vatican, accusing the media of smear campaign against the Pope. As reported in today’s Irish Times, The Vatican angrily attacked [...]
Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children: Review of the Documentary by Xoliswa Sithole
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 [...]
Pope’s Letter to Irish Catholics: He has let us Down Badly
By now most Irish Catholics and others living on this island have some idea of the content of the Pope’s pastoral letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland. They know that the Pope has said that he is sorry (sort of), that most victims of abuse are disappointed and angry by the content of the [...]
Irish Catholic Church and Sex Abuse: Tragedy & Farce
The abuse of children in the care of the Catholic Church is a tragedy. The way the Irish Catholic Church has dealt with the abuse is descending ever more rapidly into farce. It’s been a tough week for the church, as revelations have emerged about clergy in high places devising oaths of secrecy and pay-offs [...]
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.
