What would Jesus say?
Dear Editor, the Lord Jesus was Jewish, born in Bethlehem, which is now in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. One wonders if He were walking the roads of His native land today, what would he say and do? Judging by His life as recorded in the Bible, we know that He would condemn all violence, hatred and greed and advocate fearlessly for the marginalised. Like most religious leaders, His message was one of peace, love and justice.
But where there is injustice, there will never be peace.
We are all living witnesses to this human catastrophe: a genocide conducted in many ways and stages. First, the relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of homes, hospitals, places of worship and even so-called “safe” refugee camps. Then the orchestrated famine while food supplies rotted at the border. And now the disgraceful embargo on foreign aid groups providing critical life-saving assistance.
No fewer than 37 international governmental organisations are being banned from helping the Palestinians, including Action Aid, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and World Vision International. The pretext? According to the Israeli diaspora foreign ministry, the groups are not providing Israel with “complete and verifiable information regarding their employees”. Considering that hundreds of aid workers have been targeted and killed by the IDF over the past two years, who could blame the aid groups for trying to protect their staff, operating in one of the most dangerous zones on earth?
Why is it so difficult to join the dots between anti-Jewish attacks like the recent Australian one and the ongoing situation in Gaza and the West Bank? As long as Benjamin Netanyahu and his government pursue their heartless persecution of the Palestinian people, antisemitism will continue to raise its ugly head globally.
As a Christian, I unreservedly condemn the violent Bondi Beach attack, with its loss of 15 Jewish lives and the injuring of so many more. Likewise, for the brutal October 7 attack on Israel in 2023. But equally, I condemn the massacre of more than 71,000 people in Gaza since that date and the ongoing daily killings (over 400 since the ceasefire of October 2025). Until Israel halts its systematic genocide of the Palestinian people and recognises their right to live in their own state in Palestine, similar attacks—sad to say—will continue against innocent Jewish people elsewhere.
How ironic that Netanyahu and his ministers—the very people who most vociferously decry hatred of Jews—are the very ones furiously fuelling the flames of antisemitism all over the world.
Might it be that the victim-complex suits the agenda?
Yours etc,
Sinéad Boland
Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow
Complex Local Authority Housing Lists
Dear Editor, we hear a lot about the Local Authority Housing List, but few people ever get to see this list. Data Protection in this case has led to a lack of transparency. So, how transparent can this list be if only a select few see it? To my knowledge, elected representatives never get access to the complete list.
Elected Councillors should be allowed to inspect the Social Housing List in order to make adequate representations for clients and to ensure that allocations are done in a fair and transparent manner. Surely the tried and tested ‘Time-Based Housing Allocation’ should not have been abandoned as the present situation has led to friction and calls of unfairness in allocations of new social homes.
Then there is a Priority List where some tenant by-pass the time-based list. Who decides who gets on this Priority List? Do the proposed tenants have to tick boxes, and who decides which boxes are to be ticked? In this process, do the needs of those years on the Social Housing List get reassessed or bypassed?
At present, Priority Housing can be manipulated, leaving some people on the Housing List nearly 10 years or more in Limbo not knowing if they will ever get a permanent home.
Tenants on the HAP Scheme (Housing Accommodation Scheme) are deemed “adequately housed” by Local Authorities and are put on a “Transfer List”, so their housing need is downgraded. Most of these tenants don’t know this. So when their landlord wants to sell up, they find they may even have been taken off the Housing List altogether!
This is a dilemma for many housed under the HAP Scheme in 2026. They now find themselves ‘Homeless’ as landlords vacate the rental market in droves due to no new Government initiatives coming in in March, where tenants will have a right to tenancy for 6 years before a landlord has a right take back the property.
Yours etc,
Nuala Nolan
Bowling Green, Galway
The Society of St Pius X is not a ‘schism’
Dear Editor, Alexander Brüggemann laments that some Catholics were “driven into the arms of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X’ which ‘ultimately chose the path of schism.’” (Vatican II: A new dawn for the Church, December 11).
As an Irish priest of that Society, I would like to correct the record: the Society never “chose the path of schism” nor is it now separated from the Catholic Church. No-one in Rome says that the Society is in schism.
In fact, the late Pope Francis in his La Croix interview of May 17, 2016 said, “I often spoke with them. They greeted me, asked me on their knees for a blessing. They say they are Catholic. They love the Church. (…) I believe, as I said in Argentina, that they are Catholics.”
Here’s the rub. The Society is the bête noire of the Vatican II Church because it says that the Council did not define any dogma of the Faith (as Brüggemann acknowledges), and that the Tridentine Mass was never abrogated (as Benedict XVI taught); it draws the logical conclusions that Vatican II is capable of error where it contradicts the perennial teaching of the Church and that the Old Mass is not illegal. It then utters an unpalatable truth.
The Council and its subsequent reforms watered down the teaching of the Faith in an attempt to attract the world; the actual result has been that the Faith is not really taught, and the Light of Christ entrusted to the Catholic Church is hidden.
The victims are generations deprived of the Catholic Faith known and practised as the most valuable thing we possess. Like the universal Church, the Society is composed of some saints and many sinners, but its most irritating aspect is this: decades after we threw open the windows, it is still saying: “do you remember all that stuff about the Catholic Church alone being the Ark of Salvation, about the Mass being a sacrifice, about mortal sin and true contrition, about death, judgement, heaven and hell? Well, it’s all still true.”
Yours etc,
Fr David Sherry
Superior, Society of St Pius X,
District of Great Britain and Ireland, London.
Two votes saved many unborn babies
Dear Editor, when abortion was voted on in 2018, legal safeguards were guaranteed. In Dáil Eireann on Wednesday, December 17, 2025 a proposed motion to remove those safeguards for the unborn was put to a vote.
71 of our elected representatives voted to remove the safeguards and to extend the abortion of our fellow Irish unborn.
Firstly, the ‘three-day’ period allowed for the mother-to-be to make her final decision would be scrapped. This ‘three-day’, I’m told, saved many lives, when the woman concerned had more time to think and discover other options available to her.
Abortion would now be to full term and not twelve weeks in the womb. 71 members voted in support of these changes, but thanks be to God, 73 others voted for the lives of the unborn. We must be thankful to them and admire their moral courage.
Just two votes saved so many unborn.
Martin and Harris stayed away on the day. Four well-known members abstained. No mention on TV news of this very important event in the Dáil, and almost no coverage in the media.
Thankfully, the internet published the names of the 71 ‘yes’ and the 73 ‘no’. I hope future voters will recall these names when they go to vote in the future.
Yours etc,
Nuala Doran
Raheen, Limerick
Knowledge without adoration is flawed
Dear Editor, Breda O’Brien’s article ‘Pope Benedict’s infancy narratives’ (The Irish Catholic, January 1, 2026) gives great insights into the biblical account of the Birth of Jesus. Most people have to depend on English versions of the Gospels. These are interpretive translations; this can lead to differences between versions. Literal translations have their own problems which will not be referred to here.
Pope Benedict addresses the problems with interpretive translation. Breda quotes him, “It struck me how untroubled he is by apparent contradictions between one Gospel text and another” and “He remains completely serene, affirming the historical truth of the Infancy narratives but placing it within ‘interpretive history’ where the Evangelists’ aim is to recount real events through a theological lens, showing how those events fulfil divine prophecy and reveal God’s saving action”.
Benedict takes a swipe at academic theologians who provide an image of theology that exhausts itself in academic disputes. For him, knowledge without adoration is flawed. So after the academic theology, it is necessary to come adore Him.
Yours etc,
Daithi O’Muirneachain
Drumcondra, Dublin 9
Denmark colonised and brutalised Greenland
Dear Editor, as a colonised people, the Irish should most definitely not have anything to do with the joint EU plans to support Denmark in their Greenland policy.
The Danes colonised Greenland and treated the native Inuit population with great cruelty. They effectively initiated a policy of ethnic cleansing against these people.
For example, Inuit children were separated from their families in Greenland and transported 3,500 kilometres to be forcibly adopted by families in Denmark.
The contrast with our Irish missionaries, who strove to provide material and spiritual dignity to those they served, could not be greater.
In addition, the Danes commenced a policy of forcibly fitting contraceptive devices to Inuit girls and young women. In an attempt to cull the native population.
In this context, and given our own history of being maltreated by a colonising power, it is absolutely obscene that any Irish Government would give any sort of moral support to the Danish authorities. Let them fight their own battles.
Yours etc,
Eric Conway
Navan, Co. Meath
