Month: March 2019

The swashbuckling Whaley

Buck Whaley: Ireland’s greatest adventurer by David Ryan (Merrion Press, €16.95 / £14.99) Andrew 
Carpenter   This is a highly entertaining, well-written account of the life of one of 18th-Century Ireland’s most famous characters, Thomas ‘Buck’ Whaley. Born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowning family in 1765 – he was the heir of landowner, magistrate and former Member…

Remember Taoiseach’s call for new Church-State covenant, archbishop urges

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s call for a new relationship between Church and State remains an important call for dialogue, Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said. “So far no progress has been made by the Government in developing the Taoiseach’s idea of a Covenant,” Archbishop Martin said yesterday about Mr Varadkar’s Dublin Castle speech during the papal…

Pope rejects cardinal’s resignation

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon said Pope Francis would not accept his resignation following his conviction for covering up clerical sexual abuse, so he has decided to step aside temporarily for the good of the archdiocese. The cardinal had met Pope Francis on March 18 to hand in his resignation after a French court…

Controversial Belgian cardinal dies aged 85

Junno Arocho Esteves   Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, retired archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, died March 14 at the age of 85. Pope Francis expressed his condolences to Cardinal Danneels’ family, and the Belgian faithful and praised the late prelate’s zeal for the Church, especially during the Synod of Bishops on the family in 2014 and 2015.…

Abortion job requirements ‘undermine’ maternal healthcare, bishops warn

Making a willingness to perform abortions a job requirement for consultant doctors threatens the training and recruiting of hospital staff, Ireland’s bishops have said. In a statement following the Spring 2019 General Meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the hierarchy “noted with regret the pre-conditions for applicants listed in the recent advertisement for a…

A revolutionary movement indeed

Revolutions don’t always happen with riots in the streets, or even ordered declarations of a new national order. Revolutions sometimes take place quietly, when nobody is paying attention, or by slow, gradual, incremental change. Back in 1989, a revolution began which none of us even knew about. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British engineer and computer…