Thomas O’Loughlin
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Quick thinking, slow witted
Dictators and demagogues understand a basic human weakness — our preference for neat, simple explanations over messy, complicated realities.
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Bastille Day values: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
The revolutionary triad may express convictions Christianity had long held about freedom, fairness and human kinship
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Standing to pray: sign of a priestly people
Vatican II’s actuosa participatio means the entire gathering celebrates, a priestly people with a presbyter presiding rather than a priest set apart from a people.
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Questions about AI are really religious questions
Every new technology carries an implicit vision of what it means to be human. That makes the deepest questions about AI fundamentally religious ones – even if much of the developed world would prefer the Church stayed silent on matters of profit and progress.
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Banksy captures our moment
A Banksy statue appeared overnight on a London street — a man in a suit, stepping into thin air. Banal at first glance, the figure crystallises something all the year’s op-eds have failed to: the breathtaking gap between political confidence and political vision in our time.
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Fake symbols lead to fake worship?
Bread is baked. Wafer is boiled. No one would serve a communion host alongside soup at a dinner table. The gap between what we call ‘bread’ and what we actually use reveals how far convenience has drifted from the gospel’s original gesture.
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Catholics and other Christians thanking God together: has the time come to change our practice?
When Pope Francis visited Rome’s Lutheran church in 2015, he reframed the Eucharist not as a doctrinal reward but as sustenance for a pilgrim people. That shift in language was small but significant, opening theological space that had been closed for decades under two conservative popes.
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Bishop’s 2028 ultimatum: married priests or collapse?
With Belgium’s seminary pipeline effectively empty, Bishop John Bonny argues that importing clergy from other continents is a form of pastoral colonialism. His 2028 target is a direct challenge to a Church model he believes is structurally broken in the secularised West.
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Being counter-cultural or just being awkward
From the women’s movement to immigrant rights, faith often finds itself at odds with society in ways that require ensuring these tensions are rooted in justice rather than fear of social change.
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The great traditionalist tilt
Research spanning four decades confirms a significant shift toward conservatism among Catholic priests in the United States. A study highlights that newer cohorts are increasingly traditional regarding moral, theological and political issues, marking a distinct departure from the liberal attitudes prevalent in previous generations of American clergy.
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