Rome

1. Lucy Lawless exploits sex and violence -- shock!
   January 26, 10

   Is there anything worse than an actress seeking a television audience by deliberately hyping the sex and violence in the show she is promoting? This is exactly what Lucy Lawless -- who is really Lucy Ryan, an Irish New Zealand actress, is trying to do to try and revive her stalled ...

2. Pope summons Irish bishops to an emergency meeting in Rome
   January 20, 10

   Pope Benedict XVI has summoned Irish bishops to discuss the fallout of the Murphy report at an emergency meeting in Rome. The meeting will take place on February 15 and 16, and there will be "several senior Vatican officials in attendance."

3. Let freedom (and President Obama) speak at Notre Dame commencement
   January 13, 10

   Posted by FatherTim at 5/16/2009 7:24 PM EDT "Touchdown Jesus!" at the University of Notre DameMy friends,Once again, with the decision of Notre Dame University to honor President Obama at today's commencement (see IrishCentral news story), we see the best and worst of many in the Church, and many who claim to be true Christians, on ...

4. For Benedict, this is the moment, and Ireland is the place
   January 13, 10

   Posted by FatherTIm at 6/5/2009 11:05 AM EDT My friends,While it's welcome news that Pope Benedict XVI will meet today with Ireland's top churchmen in the wake of a horrific report detailing decades of rapes and beatings at Church-run schools in Ireland -- This is Rome, not Hollywood, and Benedict isn't Charlton Heston.Don't expect any ...

5. Memo to Irish Catholic Church: Your services are no longer needed
   January 13, 10

   Posted by FatherTim at 7/4/2009 11:19 PM EDT My friends,For the Catholic Church In Ireland, the game is over.The Irish people, and I am convinced it is the majority, no longer wish to have the Catholic Church in their country, or in their lives, and possibly not in their ...

6. Galway voted one of world's Top Five Cities for Single Women on Vacation
   January 13, 10

   Galway has been voted one of the Top Five cities for single women to visit - the only Irish place to feature in the list.The Top Five Cities for Single Women was compiled by Single Minded Women and includes (are you ...

7. A hero speaks, but a 'Nero' can't hear him
   January 13, 10

   Posted by FatherTim at 8/24/2009 2:54 PM EDTMy friends,One of my heroes in the Irish Catholic Church -- or he was, until he was "reassigned" to France in a rare example of how the Church can move very quickly when it suits its purposes, in this case, to silence a critic -- has popped up in the news again.Fr. Adrian Troy, who became legendary in The Troubles as a parish priest at Holy Cross in north Belfast, and who famously walked with schoolkids in the bullet-riddled Ardoyne past a violent Protestant protest, has called on the Church to halt the recruitment of new priests until it addresses Ireland’s clerical child abuse ...

8. Catholic Church has lost all credibility, making me a pagan in Ireland
   January 13, 10

   Good pagan that I am, I don't darken the door of my local church from one end of the year to the next. But Christmas is ...

9. Scandal-ridden Irish Catholic Church is imploding
   January 13, 10

   My friends,The developments in the Irish Catholic Church child sex-abuse scandal over just the past few days have been nothing sort of astonishing.While the dwindling band of "the faithful" have expressed their outrage in every form and through every medium imaginable, we now -- finally -- see government officials, judges, and even police commissioners on the attack against the sick clergymen, and women, who have desecrated the Church with their decades of attacks on helpless children -- and against those who even more disgracefully have covered up these crimes against humanity's most ...

10. The Irish people should help choose Catholic bishops
    January 08, 10

    Tim Pat Coogan: Given the scale of what is happening in the Irish Catholic Church and the number of Bishops losing their jobs, the only meaningful departure would be that of the Pope himself.