It should be no surprise that I’m interested in stories about journalists, and I’m particularly drawn to stories about war correspondents on the front line. The Road to Hope with Fergal Keane (BBC News, Thursday) was a reflective and retrospective documentary narrated by the Irish journalist who worked for the BBC for years. It was…
Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband has been filmed a number of times. This week, however, I’d like to depart from my usual genre and recommend a theatrical production of it that I recently enjoyed at the Gate Theatre. Films are fine, but there’s nothing to compensate for the experience of having real people within…
The completion and inauguration of a cathedral is a rare event in modern Europe. Yesterday the Pope was in Barcelona to inaugurate the cathedral of the Holy Family on the centenary of the death of its architect Antoni Gaudi. These two books provide two contrasting biographies for readers. Peter Stanford, a well known British Catholic…
There are many contested happenings in Irish history – invasion, the conflicts over land, religious hegemony, secularism, the liberal ethic. One that still raises passions and evokes strong opinions is the nature and place of conversionism, or proselytism, in the Irish story. It hits at the heart of who today’s Irish think they are. It…
Mary Kennelly’s first collection, Sunny Spells, Scattered Showers was published in 2004. Since then subsequent books have appeared from a number of Irish publishers. On the Wind and the Singing Tide is her first collection from Salmon Poetry, “one of the most consequential houses in the Irish literary world in the last half century” according…
Recently we had five evenings in the parish, that gave us space and time to reflect a little on The Rosary. The idea came from a number of Parish Pastoral Council meetings where we looked for ways to engage with the parish on a shared journey of faith. The discussion led us to exploring the…
The Irish State needs to be “honest” and have “coherence” if it is to sustain a genuinely pluralist school system. It also needs to “stop narrowing rights while speaking the language of inclusion”, the Catholic Education Partnership (CEP) has told the United Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in a lengthy submission to its Universal Periodic Review…
Human dignity is “non-negotiable”, Bishop Niall Coll has said in response to the new papal encyclical on Artificial Intelligence. The document, titled Magnifica Humanitas, warns that technology must always be at the service of people, rather than the other way around. Writing for The Irish News on June 1, the Raphoe bishop suggested that the…
Pop star Keith Duffy has said his faith helped him through the “dark and difficult” period following the death of his Boyzone bandmate Stephen Gately. Speaking to the Sunday Independent, the singer said he suffered “horrendous” nightmares after Gately’s death in 2009 and would drink heavily because “when you pass out drunk you don’t dream”. Asked…
Taoiseach Micheal Martin has been criticised for appointing as a junior minister the only Fianna Fail TD who voted in favour of a recent bill from the Social Democrats that would have abolished the three-day waiting period before a woman can have an abortion. This was among other changes the bill would have introduced aimed…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello