Perhaps because of my visits to Tokyo I’ve been haunted by images from a film I saw some time ago. The multi-award winning Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson, displays a relationship that unfolds between two Americans – a middle-aged man and a younger woman – when they meet in Japan. Portrayed Read more
I would venture to say that Pope Francis and the comic genius Groucho Marx could agree on one of Groucho’s famous one liners: “I would never join a club that would have me as a member.” Though the pope may never have heard the line, he would know what Groucho meant. Groucho’s humour had an instinctive Read more
Pope Francis has called an extraordinary synod of bishops on the family in October. The hot button issue for the gathering is already well known – whether divorced and remarried Catholics can or should be able to receive the Eucharist. Battles lines at the Vatican have already been drawn in the differing views expressed by Read more
It’s clear that Pope Francis has a style and approach to his job that contrasts sharply with those of his predecessors over the last 50 years. The frequently asked question is whether there is substance behind the style and if so, what does it look like? Traces of what he draws on are there to Read more
It is difficult to overestimate the rate and depth of change and the collapse of a phase of the Church’s life that is currently underway. Throughout the world, but particularly in Ireland, the sense of the end of an era that delivered the largest growth in the history of the Church, something foundational is happening. Read more
The resignations of two bishops on child sex abuse allegations in the past six weeks and the Vatican’s handling of these latest cases has again prompted questions on how the world’s oldest monarchy handles controversy: It ignores it. In both cases – a nuncio to the Dominican Republic and, most recently, an auxiliary bishop in Read more
Much has been made of the impressions Pope Francis has created by his ordinary, every day activities: catching buses, using a telephone to make his own calls, not dressing in all the fine drapery usually worn by popes, treating people respectfully as he did the journalists, celebrating the Holy Thursday Mass in a Roman prison. Read more
As my recently deceased spiritual guide, Peter Steele, would never tire of saying: ‘There are only two conditions in the spiritual life — you’re either growing or you’re dying.’ What makes for spiritual growth? In my childhood and adolescence, it was all about going to Sunday Mass, confessing your sins once a month at least, going Read more
“Viewed overall, the state of the Church is not too encouraging. In the space of a single generation, the deepening dearth of priests will lead to the collapse of the entire structure of parish administration, and I cannot see sufficient courage or creativity among those who have assumed responsibility for running the Church as an institution Read more