Since the work of child protection must continue after the February meeting at the Vatican on safeguarding, one organiser has said they plan on creating a “task force” with teams on every continent. The task force would be just one of a number of “concrete measures that we want to offer the bishops of the…
Questions of Faith It’s no secret that Catholics believe Mary is the Mother of God, a fate she learned about at the Annunciation. According to the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel came to Mary as a young virgin and said: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now,…
Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1914-1945 by Ramachandra Guha London: Allen Lane, 2018, £40 Patrick Claffey SVD In 1911 the British authorities decided to move the capital of their Indian Empire from Calcutta to Delhi. They set about doing this by creating a new district that came to be known as New Delhi. The work…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough World Youth Day, the massive, global gathering of young Catholics, took place in Panama this year, finishing with a papal Mass last Sunday. As always, this colourful gathering yielded all kinds of beautiful moments and images, but the one that spoke most powerfully to me was taken by a…
Pat O’Kelly Following the departure of Kazakh musician Alan Buribayev when his extended contract expired in 2016, the RTÉ NSO has been without a principal conductor. In the ‘interregnum’ there have been a number of visiting artists on the podium not least Nathalie Stutzmann who has been principal guest conductor since 2017. Born in…
My wife and I are like ships in the night –weary ships, that need a long spell in dry dock for repairs. We are incessantly commanded on strange, but urgent, midnight missions by capricious miniature admirals: babies, small children and viruses. From the deepest dream, each night I might awaken to find the bedroom door…
Dear Editor, Gabriel Doherty’s comments in your front-page story this week (IC 24/1/2019) have really shown up the ignorance and intellectual shallowness of our political classes. That the Taoiseach should have thought references to private property and the Common Good in our Constitution derive from socialism rather than from basic Catholic social teaching points to…
One of the great sorrows of many Irish parishes is the pain felt by parents and grandparents when family members no longer go to Mass. Whenever I speak at parish events or novenas, I see the acute pain as people tell me about how they did their best to bring their children up in the…
People say we have a toxic relationship with all sorts of things, but gambling has to be up there as one of the most serious scourges. TV drama Cleaning Up (UTV, Wednesdays and Virgin Media 1, Mondays) makes for uncomfortable viewing as Sam (Sheridan Smith) unravels due to her addiction to all sorts of gambling.…
Ignoring the role of faith in the fight for Irish freedom misrepresents the history of the struggle, a leading historical adviser to the Oireachtas has warned. As politicians met this week for a historic joint sitting to mark the centenary of the meeting of the first Dáil, UCC historian Gabriel Doherty has insisted that the…
Colm Fitzpatrick
Michael Kelly
Brendan O’Regan
Greg Daly