“It would be more accurate to speak of promotion of the right to cause death”, writes Breda O’Brien The idea that you can gather 100 people together over a number of weekends and that they will come to independent conclusions that are better than those arrived at by elected representatives is an interesting one. It…
Organisers of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next year have expressed delight that 900 people have already expressed an interest in volunteering at the event. Fr Tim Bartlett, Secretary General of the World Meeting of Families 2018 (WMOF2018), told The Irish Catholic that while an official call for 2,000 volunteers had not yet…
“No-one wants them.” Across the plethora of reporting of the plight of Myanmar’s tortured Rohingya community, no single phrase summed up the plight of a people so precisely as that employed by Pope Francis on February 8. During his weekly General Audience, the Pontiff chose to make the despised Muslim minority community the subject of…
In the Hebrew Scriptures, that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, we find a strong religious challenge to always welcome the stranger, the foreigner. This was emphasised for two reasons: first, because the Jewish people themselves had once been foreigners and immigrants. Their Scriptures kept reminding them not to forget that. Second,…
The World of Books The old adage tells us we are what we eat. Whatever about that, it is certainly true that, intellectually at least, we are what we read. This being the case, I was not unnaturally curious about how books might have shaped the mind and imagination of the new president of the…
Gregory O’Connor Rebellion and Revolution in Dublin: Voices from a Suburb, Rathfarnham, 1913-23 (South Dublin County Council, €15; available also from any South Dublin Library, or online from www.southdublinlibraries.ie/bookstore) This book consists of 13 essays by different authors on various aspects of the momentous events which occurred in the 10 years between the founding of…
The concept of successful or optimal ageing has become part of the lexicon of modern day geriatrics and encompasses maintaining in as far as is possible our cognitive, physical and mental health as we grow older. Despite this, cognitive function which is crucial to healthy ageing declines significantly in many older adults. Indeed, few conditions…
I think the dog is putting a challenge up to me. I’ve written about Roise before, how she joins in with us when we pray the Angelus. As we respond to the prayers, Roise makes a strange, sing-song baying sound. She’s a pack animal and we are her pack so she wants to join with…
Nicole O’Leary Nicole O’Leary describes how students in Portlaoise benefit from the John Paul II Awards As part of being a CEIST school, 5th and 6th year students from Scoil Chríost Rí, Portlaoise, participate in the John Paul II awards annually. Girls in our school from all walks of faith come together to rejoice and…
Fences (12A) ‘Good fences make good neighbours’, wrote Robert Frost. The present – heavily symbolic – film re-writes that epithet to read, ‘some people build fences to keep people out and other people build them to keep people in’. Based on August Wilson’s Pulitzer pize-winning play of the same name, it deals with the efforts…
Breda O'Brien
Mags Gargan
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Dr Kevin McCarroll
Bairbre Cahill
Aubrey Malone