By Peter Kasko I have been on the journey of discovering, or perhaps re-discovering, faith for some time now. I am a cradle Catholic: baptised as a child, receiving First Communion and Confirmation, checking all the boxes as expected. But I reached the point where I realised I didn’t actually know what faith truly…
Nationwide (RTÉ One, Saturday) featured a special programme on St Oliver Plunkett to mark the 400th anniversary of his birth. Presented by Colm Flynn, it was a concise but comprehensive overview of his life and death. We heard from Fr Mark Mohan, Parish Priest of Oldcastle Co. Meath, home of the Plunkett family – a…
Last week I wrote about Will Hays, Fr Daniel Lord and the formation of the Production Code Administration (PCA). This prohibited the release of films deemed anathema to a Catholic ethos in early Hollywood. I mentioned the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal. Some years before, there was the drug death of Wallace Reid and the murder of…
The Uses of Idolatry William T. Cavanaugh Oxford University Press, £97.00 / €113.59 This book is important and difficult. Important because it orientates us in a changing political landscape, difficult because it does so in a discussion of a complicated topic, “idolatry”, drawing on profound thinkers, St Augustine and Jean-Luc Marion, in particular. I…
Finding Mangan: The Lives and Afterlives of Ireland’s National Poet Bridget Hourican Gill Books, €22.99 / £17.50 James Clarence Mangan was not always destined to be Ireland’s ‘national poet’. That place at that time in the 1830s had been long and largely filled by Thomas Moore. Today Moore has a large and challenging statue…
I spent two very happy weeks in Canada in June — my longest holiday since COVID. One of my great holiday treats is to sit into the pews for Sunday Mass, while another priest does the work — and I watch, critically. On Trinity Sunday I found myself in Lindsay, Ontario, right in the middle…
An approximately 100-kilometre-long memorial route leads survivors of the Srebrenica massacre and activists through forests, mountains and villages. The events of 1995 continue to complicate coexistence in Bosnia-Herzegovina to this day. Starting on Wednesday, more than 6,000 people in Bosnia-Herzegovina will commemorate the victims of the Srebrenica massacre with a three-day “peace march”. The approximately…
Since its reopening in December, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris has recorded record-breaking visitor numbers. Other world-famous attractions in France can hardly keep up. More than six million people have visited Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris since it reopened just over six months ago. With an average of 35,000 visitors per day, it is currently the most…
Attempts by Government to push religious orders to pay millions in redress to people affected by mother and baby homes has been described as a “form of extortion”, by Senator Ronan Mullen. Seven Catholic bodies have been asked to contribute more than a quarter of a billion euro to a redress scheme being set up…
Opus Dei has responded to criticisms contained in a widely publicised new book by a former member who complains about her treatment at the hands of the organisation. Anne Marie Allen, now 62, joined a two-year residential training course run by Opus Dei in Tuam, Co Galway, at the age of 15 in 1978. She…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Chai Brady
Renata Steffens