Spreading the global community spirit

Trócaire’s regional manager for Latin America, Sally O’Neill tells Mags Gargan that Christmas is a time for togetherness   Christmas for Trócaire’s Sally O’Neil no longer means the snowy hills of County Tyrone, but the tropical heat and humidity of Honduras in Central America. ”I don’t miss having a white Christmas,” she says, ”I have…

The God who is revealed in Christmas

  Christmas is God’s answer to human longing, God’s response to the centuries of prayers that lay hidden in our groaning, our sighs, our frustrations, and our religious efforts, each of them a plea, mostly silent, for a divine intervention, all of them asking God to come and rid the world of injustice and our…

2011 in film

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…   A year of predictable sequels, dire re-makes, the occasonal gem, eccentric ‘indie’ films getting swallowed up by the comglomerates — so what else is new? It began with a lot of whataboutery as to whether Roman Polanski was going to do…

Taoiseach helped to lower media standards

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s speech against the Vatican set the scene for low media standards, writes Fr Andrew McMahon It was ironic to hear Taoiseach Enda Kenny lament, a couple of weeks ago, ”a grievous loss of standards” at RTÉ, given that the backdrop for his comments was a controversy around alleged child abuse by Catholic…