“We view our core members as friends, not clients,” says Maria Lezama, a volunteers’ coordinator for L’Arche Cork. L’Arche (French for ‘The Ark’) began in 1964 when Jean Vanier invited two men, who were confined within a local institution because of their intellectual disabilities, to come live with him. Together they shared a small house in…
There’s a famous billboard that hangs along a congested highway that reads: You aren’t stuck in traffic. You are traffic! Good wit, good insight! How glibly we distance ourselves from a problem, whether it is our politics, our churches, the ecological problems on our planet or most anything else. We aren’t, as we want to…
Everything Everything (12A) Maddy has spent most of her 18-year life cooped up in her custom-built California home. Her world is the internet. She can’t go outside the door because she suffers from a rare condition SCID (Severe Combined Immuno Deficiency). Translated into English, that means her immune system doesn’t work. Any virus could kill…
When a drama is scheduled to run for four consecutive nights you know the broadcaster thinks it’s offering something special. And so it was with The State (Channel 4), which finished on Wednesday of last week. It was sad, disturbing, absorbing, and the recent terrorist attacks made this story of people joining ISIS all the…
The monasteries magdalen asylums and reformatory schools of Our Lady of Charity in Ireland 1853 – 1973 by Jacinta Prunty (Columba Press, €34,99) I found Jacinta Prunty’s account of the institutions of the congregation of Our Lady of Charity both magisterial and immensely satisfying. But here I must declare a personal interest. With other duties…
Radical & Free: Musings on the Religious Life by Brian O’Leary (Messenger Publications, €10.99) With vocations seemingly in permanent decline, there is a need, some Catholics might feel, for a book of this kind by an experienced lecturer, to explain to a sceptical age where the sources of a religious vocation lie. The answer to the…
Warner’s love of food in all its variety and versatility greatly enlivens his provocative, most entertaining book. He argues that healthy eating involves moderate consumption of a wide range of foods. The odd treat – a bag of crisps, a biscuit – does us no harm. The bag of chips that rounds off a jolly…
In the middle decades of the last century the National Geographic – then a magazine well worth reading – carried in the back pages a section of small ads for, among other things, elite schools. A feature of these were the ads for Military Academies. These were nothing to do with the US Army. They…
One of the great challenges that Pope Francis is setting before the Church is the need for Catholics to get out of their comfort zones and bring the Gospel closer to people. Francis likes to talk about the absolute urgent need to reach out to what he describes as the “existential margins” or “peripheries” of…
EXCLUSIVE There will be just six first year seminarians at the national seminary when classes resume later this month, according to figures obtained by The Irish Catholic. It is thought to be the lowest number on record in Maynooth’s 222 year history. While returns from 25 of the country’s 26 dioceses show that 15 men…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Michael Kelly
Colm Fitzpatrick