Dermot Roantree

View all posts
Dermot Roantree is content editor with Irish Jesuit Communications and he is also the editor of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. He has a doctorate in Modern History and many years of teaching and of e-learning projects behind him. He is married with two children.
The gift of darkness

October 9, 2016

DERMOT ROANTREE :: Leonard Cohen's new album, 'You want it darker', is a fitting conclusion to a life of art that probed the mystery of the divine and the human.

Read more
Shaped by death: Nick Cave’s new album

September 18, 2016

DERMOT ROANTREE :: Everything about 'The Skeleton Tree' is beautiful but heart-breaking. While preparing it, Cave heard that his son had died in an accident.

Read more
‘Amoris Laetitia’ – putting the pastoral first

April 25, 2016

DERMOT ROANTREE :: The moral approach advocated in 'Amoris Laetitia' is about putting God's mercy first in all pastoral situations, not (as some have claimed) about accommodating the sexual revolution.

Read more
Does being Christian make a difference?

March 16, 2016

DERMOT ROANTREE :: When it comes to such issues as immigration and the needs of suffering peoples, what difference should one's Christianity make?

Read more
The Pope is not infallible

February 16, 2016

DERMOT ROANTREE :: The Church does not, strictly speaking, teach that the Pope is infallible. George Wilson, an American Jesuit, explains the issue in a recent Commonweal article

Read more
The difference mercy makes

December 8, 2015

DERMOT ROANTREE :: It is the conservative critics of Pope Francis, not those who favoured the Kasper proposal at the recent Synod on the Family, who need to account for...

Read more
Church doctrine: The same but different

October 14, 2015

DERMOT ROANTREE :: Post 2 in series on 'Change we can believe in'. The Church makes the proud claim to be 'always the same' – the same even when it's...

Read more
Change we can believe in, No. 1

October 1, 2015

DERMOT ROANTREE :: One of the features of the current pontificate is that it has given rise to unending chatter about the Church and change. Sometimes the talk is about...

Read more
Bonhoeffer in Rome

January 23, 2015

DERMOT ROANTREE :: On his visit to Italy as an 18-year-old in 1924, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was enthralled by the sights he witnessed in the Jesuit mother-church, the Gesù, and in...

Read more
Pope Francis and his discontents

January 13, 2015

DERMOT ROANTREE :: Pope Francis may be the most popular man in the world, but he certainly has his critics. The most vocal – and at times intemperate – of...

Read more