Church leaders from across traditions gathered in Newry this month for a major care for creation conference, as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (18–25 January) begins with an ecumenical call for Christians to live as “one body and one spirit”. Marking the unity week, Archbishop Eamon Martin, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, and Archbishop…
The Order of Malta in Ireland has welcomed the launch by An Post of a commemorative stamp marking the centenary of the priestly ordination of Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, one of Ireland’s most notable twentieth-century humanitarians. Born in Co. Kerry and ordained in Rome in 1925, he later served in the Vatican Diplomatic Service and the…
Are women to blame for the social and political phenomenon known as ‘wokeness’? That’s the controversial view of the American commentator Helen Andrews, whose broadcasts and interviews on this topic are all over YouTube. Ms Andrews has written that “wokeness” is not a new ideology, or an outgrowth of Marxism, as sometimes claimed. “It is…
Would you have the faith to buy a one-way ticket to Lourdes, check into the best hotel, without a penny – and trust that the Mother of God would pick up the tab? Well that’s what a young Irish American priest did to mark the fifth anniversary of his ordination – though his nerve wavered…
As Catholic Schools Week is marked across the country, news that the Bishops’ Conference is establishing a commission to examine how the Church might aid the process of school divestment will be welcomed by many. It suggests a long-overdue action to engage seriously with a reality that has been discussed, debated, and deferred for more…
Tracing Ireland’s forgotten desert saint The antiquity of the Irish church is a historic curiosity. We truly know very little about how and when Christianity arrived on the shores of Ireland. But arrive it did, and we are left with a few highly stylised legends about how this came to be. One of our…
Bloody Summer: A New History of the 1798 Rebellion, by James Quinn (UCD Press, €30.00 / £25.00) Though the events of 1798, variously a “rebellion” for some, but for others a proto-revolution, have never been forgotten, their meaning at the time and their present-day significance today are still debated, often with heated exchanges. The events…
Nano Nagle (1718-1784), the pioneer of education in Ireland, founded, despite legal prohibition, free schools in Cork City for the education of poor girls and boys. Nano also established night classes for the mothers of her pupils. Nano used her vast wealth to finance her schools so that, in her own words, “the pupils might…
When we engage in conversation about addiction, there is a good chance that unless we have suffered from serious addiction ourselves, we will see ourselves apart from the group of people who have become enslaved to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography and the like. However, it is closer to the truth that all of us suffer…
Borders in Ireland have long been instruments of division, imposed by politics and hardened by history. For more than forty years, the line separating the Republic from Northern Ireland was a fault line of violence and fear, and it remains a political football for parties north and south of the border, first drawn after the…
Mary Kenny
Martina Purdy
Peter Costello