I published a book, Keeping the Faith, in 2005. It was my effort at the time to highlight the areas that needed reform in the Catholic Church. In that book I quoted from Hans Kung’s book Christianity, the Religious Situation of our Time.

He was writing from his experience of dealing with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, now DDF). This is what he wrote:

The Roman Inquisition, founded in the Middle Ages, continues.

It is easy to distrust the outsider’s view of religious life since it is what it is, a way of life, which the outsider however well intentioned can only assess from the outside. All left brained assessments of religious life will demonstrate enormous certitude based on details drawn as honestly as possible from the external worlds of various ministries and badly attempted ‘good works’. 

No one will remember that we were once ordinary young girls growing up in Ireland who simply chose another way of life.

December 31 2023

Statement from the Association of Catholic Priests

31 Dec 2023

The reality of the war in Gaza continuing right through Christmas must have been somewhere in the minds of most people, even at the height of the season’s celebrations.

In the minds of priests, it would have been almost impossible to shut out the clamour of war, as we celebrated the Eucharist, that great act of peace and joy.