Sarah Mac Donald Archbishop Richard Clarke tells Sarah Mac Donald about his plans to get the Church of Ireland out of survival mode As the year of centenaries and elections begins to unfold, opinions on party manifestos and commemorative events are reaching a crescendo. Amid the clamouring views, one authoritative voice, with an all-island perspective,…
Month: January 2016
News in Brief
Cork school to launch Catholic Schools Week Mount Mercy College will be the first school in Cork to host the national launch of Catholic Schools Week next Monday (January 25). Catholic Schools Week will run from Sunday, January 31 to Saturday, February 6 and is an all-Ireland annual event which invites Catholic schools to give expression in a special way to…
How UN committees influence Irish social policy
Ireland has to answer to international organisations overwhelmingly secularist and ‘liberal’ in their outlook, writes David Quinn The bishops will have to starting preparing themselves for a possible referendum on schools within the lifetime of the next government. The distinct possibility of such a referendum was flagged at an appearance by Ireland before the UN…
Catholic education equips students for a pluralist Ireland
Eilis Humphreys Faith schools empower students with an understanding of the spiritual dimension of life, writes Eilis Humphreys We are living in a world that is changing too fast to be easily understood and that poses a challenge to everybody in the coming years not least those involved in our schools. There has been much…
Rural decline
Fr Micheál Mac Gréil SJ Urban areas are being industrialised at the expense of many parishes and communities, writes Fr Micheál Mac Gréil SJ The growing concern of the relative deprivation of many communities in the West of Ireland is timely and I welcome the highlighting of the current crisis in last week’s edition of…
Our Church must accommodate change
“It is in the interpretation of individual situations that there is scope for more generosity and more compassion”, writes Nuala O’Loan One of the things which has impressed itself upon me recently is the extent to which the Church in which I grew up has changed so much. That Church was manifestly different from the…
Does self-esteem deter teenage suicide?
“it’s a sense of grittiness that you need to get through life, not just confidence in yourself”, writes Mary Kenny Psychologists these days are constantly called on to help inspire self-esteem and a sense of self-worth in growing children – David Coleman, the clinical psychologist, is in regular demand to advise parents, teachers and guardians…
Couple prayed for daughter’s killer
The parents of one of the victims of serial child killer, Robert Black have said they prayed for the murderer, who died in Maghaberry Prison in Co. Antrim last week. In 2011, Black, originally from Scotland, was convicted of the 1981 abduction and murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry in Lisburn, Co. Antrim. “There…
Ireland’s religious culture is now in flux
“The Church needs to find a way to help families, often with a limited sense of the Faith, explore whether or not the sacraments are important to them”, writes Editor Michael Kelly There’s no doubt that the report on the Archdiocese of Dublin showing a dramatic decline in the number of priests and the number…
Blessing for all creatures great and small
A dog reacts as it is blessed outside San Anton Church in Madrid, Spain on Sunday, when hundreds of people brought their pets to be blessed for the feast day of St Anthony, patron saint of animals. Photo: Reuters/Andrea Comas



David Quinn


Nuala O’Loan
Mary Kenny

Michael Kelly