Month: March 2017

Animated conversations and loaded terms

Has Political Correctness Gone Mad? – a documentary with a name to draw in the curious, on  Channel 4 last Thursday night. It was billed as an authored programme, an opinion piece, by Trevor Phillips, and despite advance warnings about bad language and racist terms, it was actually a reflective and relatively moderate programme. I…

Supporting young people on their faith journey

Michelle Manley Michelle Manley describes the work of Dublin’s new Youth Evangelisation Team The Archdiocese of Dublin has established a new Youth Evangelisation Team, tasked with faith outreach to teenagers and young adults. The central hub for this exciting new venture is right in the heart of Dublin in St Paul’s Church at Arran Quay…

Pancake Tuesday may be over but it always reminds me of delicious spiced Semlor buns from Sweden. Instead of pancakes, in Sweden they have light cardamom buns filled with almond paste or marzipan, and fresh cream. I’d never tasted anything as sweet as semlor buns and although I’ve yet to try the recipe, I’ve come…

Faith in the Family

“There goes another one!” We were practising ballads for the GAA Scór competition and we needed help to add harmonies and generally lift the quality of what we had learned from straightforward ballads to something a little special. Brighdín has the most amazing musical ability. All it took was for us to begin singing the…

Cyberbullying – How to protect your kids

Mags Gargan looks at simple recommendations for parents to keep children safer online Cyberbullying has been described as the “child-protection issue of our time” and it can be very difficult for parents to walk the fine line between allowing their children access to the benefits of the internet while protecting them from the dangers. In…

Of virtue and sin

There’s an axiom which says: Nothing feels better than virtue. There’s a deep truth here, but it has an underside. When we do good things, we feel good about ourselves. Virtue is indeed its own reward, and that’s good. However, feeling righteous can soon enough turn into feeling self-righteous. Nothing feels better than virtue; but…

Married clergy – two sides to the argument

Dear Editor, Mary Kenny should be thanked for her musings on ‘Fr D’Arcy’s reflections on a parallel life’ (IC 23/02/2017), which have injected some reality into what seems an interminable drone in favour of married priests. Fr D’Arcy’s comment that he would have been a far better priest had he married is, of course, balderdash,…

Vatican Roundup

Pope considering trip to famine-struck South Sudan Pope Francis has revealed he is considering the possibility of an official trip to South Sudan. Days after he made a plea for the international community to respond to “a severe food crisis, which has hit the Horn of Africa region [and] condemns to death by starvation millions…