Some people find February a slow month in the garden, but it shouldn’t be. Spring will arrive before you know and everything will need doing at once. So make the most of February as it is your last chance to finish winter-work and get a head start on Spring. Clear your beds and borders of…
I recently overheard a woman saying she withdew her child from the school choir, in a church school, on the basis that there were “too many churchey songs”. Yet there was no animosity in this slightly eccentric criticism, it was simply that her child preferred musicals. Here in England, faith is a personal matter – to…
When I was a child, both my parents were in the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. Thirty or 40 years ago, almost everyone in Ireland knew about the Pioneers and a fair few were members. I’d guess that if you mentioned the Association to a group of young people today, there’d be a few blank expressions.…
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and it’s not just an occasion for sending cards ‘sealed with a loving kiss’. It’s just another opportunity to get your finger out and make some seasonal crafts. Because heart prints and heart designs are so popular, you can make almost any Valentine craft at any time of…
One of the dangers inherent in trying to live out a life of Christian fidelity is that we are prone to become embittered moralisers, older brothers of the prodigal son, angry and jealous at God’s over-generous mercy, bitter because persons who wander and stray can so easily access the heavenly banquet table. But this isn’t…
Dear Editor, I found your ‘Webwatch’ section on January 26 challenging, to say the least. That a Catholic blogger like Simcha Fisher could so wholeheartedly embrace the ‘women’s march’, an event with an openly pro-choice agenda, left me appalled. Did the outspoken Mrs Fisher shun the March for Life a few days later? What of…
The blasphemy law proves politically useful, writes Paul Keenan If politics is the art of ‘spin’, a masterclass of the art was offered to the world this week from Pakistan. Amid an angry row surrounding five abducted secular human rights activists, the nation’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan intervened on the issue of Pakistan’s…
On Saturday morning, Rome woke up to discover its walls and sidewalks festooned with anti-Pope Francis posters asking, “Where’s your mercy?” Under a dour shot of the Pontiff, the poster cited crackdowns on groups and individuals perceived as conservative-to-traditionalist. A few hours later, I got a phone call from a veteran Italian Vatican writer I’ve known for…
Bríd O’Meara Bríd O’Meara from Aware talks about how to build emotional resilience Resilience is a key factor in life, and something which we can all work to develop and enhance, according to Bríd O’Meara, Director of Services with Aware. “Resilience can be considered an ongoing process in life, rather than something you have or…
Religious orders ‘haemorrhaging’ members, cardinal reveals The secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has sounded a warning on the “haemorrhaging” of people from religious life. Interviewed by L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal José Rodríguez Carballo revealed that between 2015 and 2016, some 2,300 monks and nuns had left their…
Paul Gargan
Maria Byrne
Erin Fox
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Paul Keenan
John L. Allen Jr.