Welcome to the Reading Room

Here are some news stories and articles which might be of interest to you. I've posted the opening section, and if you want to read more, you can click on "Read the whole article" to go to the original item. You'll find a variety of things here -- current news, political analysis, opinion pieces, articles about religion -- things I've happened to read and want to share with you. It's your Reading Room, so take your time. Browse. You're certain to find something you'll want to read.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Confessions of a cradle Catholic

by Eamon Duffy

I have tried, but there seems something fundamentally dishonest in a Catholic of my background and generation pretending to offer a detached, universally applicable account of the power or attraction of the Church. I did not choose to be a Catholic: for me Catholicism is something bred in the bone, as fundamental a part of my identify as my name or (especially) my nationality. I was born in 1947 in the Irish east coast town of Dundalk, a strongly nationalist community just south of the border. During the Troubles of the 1970s it would earn the nick-name 'Dodge City' because it was the heart of IRA 'bandit country'; my own family were ardent nationalists. They were also (though somewhat less ardently) Catholics: ours was an observant but not a particularly pious household.

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