Antrim parish to hold ‘Prayers Matter’ to deepen Faith An Antrim parish will hold its sixth annual round table gathering on ‘Prayers Matter’ with speakers including Baroness Nuala O’Loan, Sr Elaine Kelly from the Adoration Convent in Belfast and PP Fr Patrick Delargy. The event takes place in All Saints’ Parish Centre, Cushendall Road, Ballymena, on Saturday, December 1 from 2-5.30pm. Sr Elaine…
Dear Editor, In the course of the last week, it emerged that the HSE, at the behest of the Department of Health, had offered €450 (around twice the normal delivery) to GPs, for each abortion (assassination) they performed. This stunning news was hardly mentioned in any newspaper. It was stunning, because of the value placed…
Pat O’Kelly Following the première of Don Carlos at the Paris Opéra in March 1867, Verdi returned to his farm at Sant’ Agata in the Po valley. He found peace on the land he loved and where he planted trees, cultivated vines and bred his horses. Maybe he would now retire! He had often…
Vatican opens doors to Russian ‘spiritual’ masterpieces for show In an example of the “diplomacy of art”, the Vatican has inaugurated a landmark exhibit of “spiritual” masterpieces from Moscow’s famed Tretyakov Gallery and other Russian state galleries. Some of the pieces, particularly a number of precious icons, have never been shown before outside of their home galleries, Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican…
Choo choo! With the Christmas holidays fast-approaching, how does a magical train ride through a festive forest sound? On offer from December 1–9, is ‘The Christmas Express’ at Laois’ Stradbally Woodlands Railway – the first volunteer-run heritage railway in Ireland, having been established in 1969. The whole family will get the chance to embark on…
I doubt if it happens very often that guests appearing on an RTÉ programme say the Rosary on the way to the studio, but that’s exactly what happened last weekend. It was the Marian Finucane Show last Saturday morning (RTÉ Radio 1) when the special guests were Olive Foley, wife of deceased rugby player Anthony Foley,…
From a Catholic point of view, politics is always the art of the possible. Since all politics is limited, Catholics do not look to politicians to have the answer to everything. This is why the Church does not endorse any particular political party or political strategy. In the United States, for example, it is common…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough The choir of King’s College, Cambridge is often associated with the Christmas season. For many of my English friends, the sound of Carols from King’s on the BBC on Christmas Eve is the sign that Christmas has well and truly begun. But I associate them above all with…
100 years on… The end of WWI saw this paper taking a clear anti-Sinn Féin line, writes Gabriel Doherty Given the seismic nature of the events on the Western Front over the previous month, it is no surprise that The Irish Catholic of November 23, 1918 devoted a portion of its pages to further…
Hannah Brockhaus People need the mercy of God and the healing of the Holy Spirit to root out the sin in their lives – they cannot do it on their own, Pope Francis said at the general audience today. “It is useless to think of being able to correct oneself without the gift of…
Brendan O’Regan
Michael Kelly