Irish Theological Quarterly

The high-quality commentary of Joel Marcus on Mark’s Gospel contains at least seven illuminating comments on what he calls ‘the parable of the child’ (Mark 9:36–37). His final comment pushes beyond a mere moral exhortation to welcome or show hospitality to little children. These parables, like others, make Jesus vividly present, and so reveal God, to whom Jesus is ‘strongly connected.’ Marcus should have recognized more clearly the call to recognize in vulnerable, little children the disclosed presence of God who sent his Son into the world. The face of even insignificant children brings us the face of God. The ‘mystery of the child’ reflects the ‘mystery of God.’

The synodal process will have to deal with changes in the theology of prophecy in the Catholic Church, and with the difficulty of framing prophecy in a Church where the bishops act as authentic guardians, interpreters, and witnesses of the faith. This will occur in the context of an ecclesial crisis not known at Vatican II. The essay, therefore, argues for a new voice for prophecy in positive relationship with the episcopacy and the institutional church.

Mindfulness has exploded in popularity across several elements of Irish society, including Catholic primary schools. This growth of the practice is set against the backdrop of a secularized and detraditionalized Irish society. This changed context for religious belief, as explored by Michael Paul Gallagher, Charles Taylor and Lieven Boeve, has challenged the Irish Church’s mission of evangelization. The challenges faced by Irish Catholic schools, as ecclesial entities, in living out this evangelizing mission highlight the growing necessity for pre-evangelization. These issues include a breakdown in the home, school and parish partnership model for faith formation and development, and a contemporary ‘educational emergency.’ This article examines the contribution of mindfulness as praeparatio evangelica in Catholic schools, focusing on it as a contemplative practice and as a means of enflaming sacramental imagination.

Secular public policy comes in two basic versions, namely the Anglo-Saxon and the Francophone versions, roughly reflecting the two versions of the Christian religion—the Protestant and the Catholic respectively—which the public body seeks to put to one side. To the extent that these correlations do hold, a theological interrogation is called for. Such interrogation can focus on what is a constitutive element of democracy, and overlooked in both cases of secularity, namely the value of solidarity. But the enactment of solidarity is a secular religious expression, beyond any ‘closed immanence’ that might be thought to characterize the public space. In recognizing this, the Christian churches are ethically bound to move to a major reformulation of their basic doctrines and secular society to rethink its displacement of religion.

Nigeria ranks as the world’s most violent place for Christians today. Christianity and Islam, the major religions in Nigeria, are known to preach love and peace worldwide. A brief review of the grim reality of the practical implications of these claims against endemic violence questions the meaning of religion in Nigeria. This article relates the abuse and violation of rights and, therefore, proposes the universal human right of religious freedom as a more reliable path to peaceful coexistence, as against tolerance, which today has been acknowledged as a failed strategy for enduring peace.