If the Pope’s team of apostolic visitors want to prepare for their upcoming visit to Ireland, a good place to start would be a new book edited by John Littleton and Eamon Maher, The Dublin/Murphy Report: A Watershed for Irish Catholicism? (Columba, 2010)
The book gathers an impressive array of perspectives on the handling of the sexual abuse scandals, and the pressing questions facing the Irish Catholic Church today. Among those are the questions posed by the editors in the introduction (p. 10):
Continue reading ‘The Dublin/Murphy Report: A Watershed for Irish Catholicism?: Book Review’
The Pope has announced the team of apostolic visitors who will conduct an investigation into clerical sex abuse in Ireland. The Irish Times’ Patsy McGarry remarks that the Vatican has sent in ‘heavy hitters.’ McGarry says:
Continue reading ‘The Apostolic Visitors are Coming: Wounded Healers and Healing for the Wounded?’
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 to keep secret their abuse at the hands of Fr Brendan Smyth.
Brady’s decision has prompted the inevitable back and forth of naysayers and supporters on radio phone in shows and in the blogosphere. Brady himself claims that ‘People want me to stay.’
Continue reading ‘Cardinal Sean Brady Keeps his Post, But do People want him to Stay?’
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 images of the shoes they tied on the railings outside the cathedral. The shoes were secured with black mourning ribbons.
Continue reading ‘Images from the Protest at the Pro Cathedral’
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 of the Irish Catholic Church’s loss of credibility, protesters picketed Easter Mass today at Dublin’s Pro Cathedral.
Continue reading ‘Easter Sunday in Ireland: Apology & Protest’
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 immediate aftermath of the publication of the Murphy Report into clerical abuse in the Dublin diocese. McDonagh powerfully identifies the victims and survivors of clerical sex abuse with the experience of Christ on Good Friday. This is not a facile attempt to induce victims to pray or have a stronger faith – as some have accused the Pope of doing in his pastoral letter to the Irish Catholic Church.
Continue reading ‘Enda McDonagh Book Review: Theology in Winter Light. Reflections for Good Friday’
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 sensational interview with Brendan Hughes, a former commander of the IRA in Belfast.
Continue reading ‘Gerry Adams: The Troubles & The Truth’
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,
Continue reading ‘Fr Brian D’Arcy and John Waters: Is Christ in our Collective Conversation on Clerical Abuse?’
In the recently published book, 
Yesterday the 
Recent Comments