A complete chronological listing of shorter pieces written since 1995.

Any of these articles that are not the copyright of a specified publication may be freely copied and distributed.

Articles are listed in inverse chronological order – i.e. more recent articles first.

• The Myth of Materialism
  © Doctrine and Life January 2001
  In diagnosing material accumulation as materialism Catholic churchmen mislead themselves on its root cause - that uncertainty about our own status that tells us we 'need' the objects owned by celebrities. Bishops who constantly seek preferment to a more prestigious diocese have exactly the same problem.

• Rejecting the poison chalice of church-state unity
  ©The Irish Times 2000
  Memory and Reconciliation, the Jubilee document by Pope John Paul II that acknowledged most of the mistakes of the Church under Christendom, did not provide a scriptural rationale for the principle of religious freedom, or acknowledge the danger of too close a relationship between church and state.

• Craggy Island Revisited
  © Doctrine and Life 2000
  Irish Catholics can benefit from the catharsis of laughter at re-runs of 'Father Ted' - acknowledging what was truly absurd about so many of the conventions of lay/clerical protocol in 'Catholic Ireland'?

• Bishop J.S. Spong’s ‘Why Christianity must change or Die’
  Post to Vatican II website, 1999
  Why Bishop John Shelby Spong's strategy for saving Christianity is sadly mistaken.

• Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: The Real Lessons
  © The Irish Times 1999
  If the Pope is the 'Vicar of Christ' can he be excused the challenge of risking reprisal against the church from an evil regime? That question needs to be asked in the debate over the role of Pope Pius XII in relation to the Holocaust.

• Disempowerment in the Church
  © The Furrow 1998
  Nostalgia for the past could counsel the Irish clerical church to attempt to recover its lost power. Instead clergy need to seize the opportunity to make a clean break with the 'will to power', and recover the aspiration to be a church of service.

• Why Ireland is Godless: Secularism as Divine Retribution
  © The Irish Times 1998
  It was the Catholic Church's preference for the Ancien Regime and social hierarchy that alienated it from the egalitarian drive of modernity and made much of Ireland associate belief in God with a snobbish past. In an important sense Irish secularism is God's verdict on this mistake.

• Secularism and an Adult Church
  The Furrow 1997
  The Irish Catholic Church crisis can only be addressed by a recognition of the parallel crisis of secularism - the failure of the Enlightenment to deliver Utopia. Catholic schools cannot form adult Christians: only a new dialogue between clerical honesty and adult disillusionment can reverse the Irish church's decline.

• Scandals in the Church
  Studies 1995
  Back then it seemed obvious that the shock of the Brendan Smyth scandal would jolt the Irish Church leadership into full transparency and accountability. How naive I was - yet the absence of these, and the consequent infrequency of frank adult dialogue between clergy and people, remains the critical weakness of the Irish Catholic Church.

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