Dear Editor, I recently read your article ‘Practising gratitude’ in the Family &Lifestyle section (IC 10/03/2016). I congratulate the author, Wendy Grace because I think it is an excellent article, and it gave me a lot to think about. I liked the helpful suggestions provided by Wendy for families and indeed individuals to get into…
Month: March 2016
State discriminating against Catholic ethos
Dear Editor, I am concerned to learn from the paper (IC 10&17/03/2016) that Tusla, the Government’s new Child & Family Agency, is putting pressure on the Boyle Family Life Centre (FLC) to abandon its Catholic ethos. The Boyle FLC may not be the only one amongst some 600 such centres largely financed from Catholic parishes…
Being present in times of need
Despite seeing terrible suffering, children’s hospital chaplain Sr Julie Buckley has never lost faith in God, writes Mags Gargan Sr Julie Buckley SMR is head chaplain at the Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street in Dublin. Originally from Cork she started off her nursing training in the Richmond Hospital, in Dublin, before returning to Cork to…
Former students end lawsuit against diocese in England
Former students of a Catholic college in Manchester who allege they were abused by three priests based there have abandoned their lawsuit against Salford diocese. The men, one-time students at St Bede’s College, argued that the diocese had failed to protect them from sexual abuse perpetrated as far back as the 1950s by three priests,…
Tudor controversialists and the Catholic faith
Bad Queen Bess: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Elizabeth I by Peter Lake (Oxford University Press, £35.00) It is often remarked that in modern Britain all that children learn of history are the Tudors and the Nazis. This is meagre diet, but there are universal truths to be learned…
Politicians’ broken promises on abortion
Dear Editor, Cathal Barry in your edition of March 3 is clearly hoping that Fianna Fáil forms the next government because he feels the majority of that party is not in favour of amending the Eighth Amendment. He also quotes Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign as having the same opinion. I would not be too sure.…
Filling in the census on religion
“When it comes to the faith box, if you are an adherent of a faith, or a believer in any faith, say so”, writes Mary Kenny I detect a campaign starting up on social media to encourage people – perhaps agnostics, waverers, those uncertain of their spiritual values – to append ‘no religion’ on the…
A meeting of minds at Mass
Croatian soldiers serving in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo attend Easter Mass on March 27 at St Nicholas Church in the town of Janjevo, Kosovo. CNS
Cynical to cloak modern agenda in spirit of 1916
“If politicians believe in a particular cause, they should articulate it with honesty and clarity”, writes Editor Michael Kelly Acurious aspect of the centenary commemoration around the 1916 Easter Rising is the confidence with which many people claim to know the minds of the leaders. Take Leo Varadkar (acting-Minister for Health, at least for the…
Persecuted for being Christian
Greg Daly speaks to Aid to the Church in Need about the global war on Christianity The persecution of Christians around the world is something increasingly spoken of, according to John Pontifex from Britain’s branch of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), but the problem goes far beyond perception. “It’s clearly very much getting…

Courtney McGrail

Mags Gargan

Peter Costello

Mary Kenny

Michael Kelly
Greg Daly