St John writes that before he was arrested Jesus, speaking to his disciples, told them: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus then went on to lay down his life…
Each year, I have the privilege of teaching cohorts of Catholic student teachers about liturgy and the liturgical year. It is a part of my work I value deeply, not only because of the content itself, but because of what it reveals about the changing landscape of faith among young adults. Twenty-five years ago, many…
We used to call them ‘holy pictures’ back in the long-ago days of my convent education – cheap little copies of paintings by Raphael and Botticelli, on which we schoolgirls would write messages to each other on the obverse side. And now I realise how influential these images were in illuminating the epic events of…
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is the official State body responsible for collecting and publishing statistics about the country. The CSO must count things carefully as it runs the census, produces data on population, employment, health, crime, education and the economy, sets standards for how data is defined and collected, and supplies the data used…
What would you do to protect a child from harm? For most people, the answer is simple: anything, at least anything lawful. It is therefore unsurprising that when asked whether they would support banning under-16s from accessing social media, 76% of respondents in a recent Irish Times survey said yes. The instinct is understandable. However,…
Exclusive The Bishop of Achonry and of Elphin, Kevin Doran has responded to the recent discussion on women deacons in The Irish Catholic. In his statement, Bishop Doran says the question of women deacons should not deflect from what is possible for lay women and men in the ministry and leadership in the Church…
There have always been giants in the GAA. Across generations, in both hurling and Gaelic football, certain names rise above the rest: men who delivered iconic points in dying seconds, who bent games to their will, and who etched themselves into folklore on sun-scorched Sundays in Croke Park or under the towering stands of Semple…
We are simultaneously overfamiliar with Christianity and not familiar with it at all. We look at the ‘strangeness’ of the Christian story, yet we are rarely struck by it as we should be. We are taught that 2,000 years ago God became fully man, while remaining fully God and was born to a woman in…
Before Jesus left for the Mount of Olives to sweat his own blood at Gethsemane, scripture records that the Lord and his disciples sang a hymn – a line easily overlooked in the mysteries of Holy Week. This song, possibly Psalm 118, was something that struck musician and composer Patrick Davey – who was possibly…
The Dublin diocesan archives offer a fascinating insight into the Easter Rising, writes Noelle Dowling Msgr Michael Curran, secretary to Dublin’s Archbishop William Walsh, notes in several places that the archbishop’s health began to fail in the spring of 1916, and this left him incapacitated for long periods of time. On Easter Sunday, April 24,…
Nuala O’Loan
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Martina Purdy