Month: June 2017

Take the church onto the streets

Bro. Conor McDonough Not all public voices in Ireland want to consign the Church to “the dustbin of history”, as at least one of our elected representatives apparently does, but many want it to stay behind the four walls of the church building. Many believers too, perhaps humiliated by very real scandals within the Church,…

Some tales from the meadow of the dead

Death and the Irish: A Miscellany edited by Salvador Ryan ( Wordwell, €25.00) One of the minor masterpieces of modern Irish literature is Seamus O’Kelly’s long story The Weaver’s Grave, which recounts the animadversions of two old men asked to find the family burial place in the local Cloon na Morav in Connacht. The request comes…

Hospitals unequipped to deal with suicidal teens

There are “gravely insufficient” supports and services for Irish teens at risk of suicide, according to a Mater Hospital psychiatrist. This comes as a Unicef report found that Ireland has the fourth highest suicide rate among teenagers in the EU. Prof. Patricia Casey, a UCD and Mater hospital psychiatrist, has said the emergency services are…

An abortion film that ‘avoids the issue’

Andy (Shane Murray-Corcoran) and Maggie (Iseult Casey) are a young couple from Tipperary who begin a romance when they become students together at TCD. The relationship runs into problems, however,  when Andy’s father Brendan (Ardal O’Hanlon), who’s been suffering from depression since his wife left him, attempts suicide. Andy drops out of college to be…

Bishops call for action on Africa’s ignored famine

‘Generating awareness a real challenge’ Irish bishops are beseeching parishes to take action as millions of people face famine in East Africa on a scale described as “absolutely frightening”. Bishops north and south of the border are appealing for aid to be supplied and awareness to be spread of the growing crisis, after prolonged droughts…

Being good-hearted is not good enough

Charity is about being good-hearted, but justice is about something more. Individual sympathy is good and virtuous, but it doesn’t necessarily change the social, economic and political structures that unfairly victimise some people and unduly privilege others. We need to be fair and good of heart, but we also need to have fair and good…

No limits for fairytale heroes

St Joseph’s College, Lucan, is a CEIST school founded by the Presentation Sisters situated in South County Dublin. We are an all girls voluntary Catholic school with approximately 800 students. We are fortunate to have a very successful Transition Year programme which is co-ordinated by Ms Bligh. As well as the usual school subjects we…