Catholicism in Ireland is being abandoned to obsessive extremists, a leading priest has said. Fr Brendan Hoban also criticised a “religious media more anxious to protect its pockets than engage with the realities of faith in the world”. Fr Hoban is the co-founder of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland. He made these criticisms Read more
Catholicism is not for the fainthearted says blogger Rick Becker. He suggests three easy steps to take if you want avoid being a Catholic: Read only your bible. Study the Church’s detractors and their version of Catholic teaching. Focus on the most egregious examples of Catholic hypocrisy, misdeeds and immorality. Read more
Nine percent of Americans say that they are Catholics, but that Catholicism is not their religion! That striking fact was uncovered in recent research by the Pew Research Centre. Two out of 10 respondents told the Pew pollsters that they are Catholics in the sense that they “claim the faith as their current religion.” Another one Read more
Congress and the United Nations rolling out their red carpets, nuns working overtime to bake communion hosts, prison inmates carving a walnut throne, tickets for events snapped up in seconds: America is gearing up for pope-mania. Pope Francis is expected to be greeted with huge crowds and across-the-board reverence when he tours Washington, New York Read more
Ten years ago this month, I became a Catholic. It happened in the attic of the guest house at Ealing Abbey. There was just me, a friend and a monk, and the operation took about an hour. Afterwards we went for cocktails. I started things as I meant to go on. I guess the two big Read more
The financial crisis and its aftermath have revealed the dark side of the post-cold war model, but Catholic social teaching proposes correcting the way market forces work so that they serve the public interest. It was 25 years ago this month that communism ceased to be a threat to the west and to the free Read more
Pope Francis is a Charismatic. Though I made the case for this in a HuffPost blog almost a year ago, the Argentine pontiff’s penchant for Spirit-centred Catholicism has been one of the most underreported aspects of his dynamic papacy. Francis’s spirited participation in the 37th Annual Convocation of the Charismatic movements along with some 50,000 Catholics at Read more
I never knew my maternal grandmother’s father, but my mother told me three stories that shaped my view of him. One involved his being mugged by a hitchhiker to whom he had offered a ride. I think my mom related this tale as a warning against good-natured but borderline foolish benevolence. The second dealt with Read more
Grumble, grumble, grumble, went Tim Wilson, author, journalist, TV guy, brainy guy and wit. Have I left anything out? Oh, yes, there is the little matter of his conversion to Catholicism. He said: “Were you surprised when you heard I’d become a Catholic?” Of course I was surprised! Wasn’t everyone? But why was I? he Read more
As a practicing Catholic working in the media, perhaps the five most frightening words I hear are “Pope Francis gave an interview.” They aren’t scary because of anything Pope Francis actually says; the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio spent decades choosing his words carefully as an Argentine priest and then prelate of Buenos Aires, emphasizing the Read more