Prompted by the Tuam babies controversy there were more and more harrowing personal stories, testifying to times that were less compassionate and often more cruel than today. Referring to the culture of the times helps our understanding but doesn’t provide justification – Church-run institutions should have been counter-cultural, should have set a much higher standard.…
World of Books The primacy of the word, what the Greek philosophers called logos, has been for many the only way in which both good and bad can be distinguished. Yet one has, in this day and this age, to doubt some whether this is always so. Take these words – they are from a…
Living – and dying – under a black flag The Raqqa Diaries: Escape from Islamic State by Samer, edited by Mike Thomson (Hutchinson, £9.99) In almost unbearably graphic prose, Samer – a pseudonym – describes a place in which atrocities are everyday, and life barely tolerable. Children walk to school past crucifixes from which decapitated…
In a Landscape Redrawn by Bishop Donal Murray (Veritas, €10.99/£9.35) Though it is not presented as a Lenten book, Donal Murray’s latest book is very much the sort of book which will provide readers with many insights in the way things are. He is writing very much for those who find the ‘redrawn landscape’ of…
Catholic schools have been urged to be vigilant when approached by groups offering to speak to students, following claims that a group that has been described as a ‘cult’ has targeted Cork schools. “It’s very important that there is Garda vetting, and that people are sure that whoever is talking is going to respect and…
Charlie, Malachi, Conor and Orlaith with their class teacher Mrs Quinn from P5 in St Colmans’Primary School in Annaclone, Co. Down pictured during a celebration to welcome representatives from seven countries to the school as part of the Erasmus+ programme.
Bishop Eamonn Casey “…was greatly loved by the priests and people of the dioceses of both Kerry and Galway”, writes Michael Kelly It’s hard to get across to younger generations today the enormity of the scandal that was the revelation in 1992 that Bishop Eamonn Casey had secretly fathered a child years earlier. One got…
The success of singer Michael Bublé’s young son’s battle against cancer has been described by his family as a “miracle from God”. The singing sensation and his Argentinian wife Luisana Lopilato, were devastated when three-year-old Noah was diagnosed with liver cancer following a biopsy at a clinic in Buenos Aires last year. Noah began chemotherapy…
“Here are people who are undocumented in Ireland and they are not being treated well” The Bishop of Elphin has called on the Government to exercise the same energy to help the plight of asylum seekers in Ireland as undocumented Irish abroad. Bishop Kevin Doran told The Irish Catholic he would like to see “a…
No need for redress after report – order A religious order that ran two Magdalene Laundries refused to contribute to a redress scheme after examining the findings of the McAleese committee, The Examiner has discovered. Documents released under Freedom of Information show the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity rejected the Government’s view that the…
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Greg Daly
Courtney McGrail
Michael Kelly
Mags Gargan