Month: October 2019

Searching for hope in Kenya’s slums

Personal Profile God is present in the cries and injustices of the world, Colm Fitzpatrick learns Words usually don’t do justice to depict real, lived experiences and this sentiment couldn’t be truer when describing the harrowing conditions in Kenya’s Mukuru slums. With rising poverty and violence across the region, it can be difficult to muster…

What they Gospels say: the bigger bicture

Glimpses of the Gospels: Theological, Spiritual & Practical reflections by Jack Mahoney SJ (Messenger Publications, €12.95 / £11.95) Every week – for a few, every day – Catholics hear a gospel reading at Mass. As these readings are arranged over the year along with extracts from the Old Testament and the Epistles, present a schema…

New purpose-built seminary on the cards for Maynooth

Shake-up may see students
leave historic home EXCLUSIVE Radical plans that would see Maynooth seminary leaving the college’s neogothic buildings in favour of a new purpose-built home on the same campus are being considered by the hierarchy, Primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin has told The Irish Catholic. The proposal is part of a radical shake-up…

Newman scholars challenge Taoiseach’s conscience claim

Scholars of St John Henry Newman have criticised Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for misunderstanding the new saint’s teaching on conscience. Speaking in the Dáil last week, Mr Varadkar rejected Archbishop Eamon Martin’s recent comments that Catholic politicians are obliged to support laws that uphold the dignity of every person from conception to death. The Taoiseach said…

Loneliness is a fact of life for many of us after 50

A third of Irish adults over the age of 50 report feeling lonely some of the time, according to a study carried out by Trinity College Dublin. Among those over 75, loneliness is even more prevalent. Unsurprisingly, loneliness is often accompanied by depression. A certain degree of loneliness is, I think, inevitable in the older years.…

A gifted saint with a pastor’s heart

The View All saints are extraordinary, in the sense that they manage to turn their lives and wills over to God and through his grace achieve heroic virtue. John Henry Newman is perhaps more extraordinary than most because of the extent of his natural gifts. James Joyce wrote to his long-suffering English patron, Harriet Weaver,…