Education Nation returns with Claire Kilroy as first guest Education Nation returned this week for its second season, and it was fitting that the first guest was Claire Kilroy, CEO of the Association of Patrons and Trustees of Catholic Schools (APTCS). Her appointment in September 2025 marked a significant moment for Catholic postprimary education in…
When Declan Hannon climbed the steps of the Hogan Stand in August 2018 and lifted the McCarthy Cup, the significance of what Limerick had achieved was immediately understood. Forty-five years of hurt had finally come to an end. A generation of supporters who had grown up knowing only disappointment could finally call themselves All-Ireland champions.…
The Irish Catholic Church may be facing a decisive opportunity in the 2021–2028 synodal process. Although The Irish Catholic and other Catholic publications have reported on the Vatican Synod and the Irish Synodal Pathway, there is a troubling gap between their importance and their visibility in ordinary parish life. Many practising Catholics remain only vaguely…
Are we made in the image of God or the machine? asks Fr Barry White When I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, an unsettling thought came to mind: human beings can create something they believe they control, only to discover that it has developed beyond the limits they imagined.…
Ahead of the March for Life in Berlin scheduled for Saturday, the Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference has called for vigilance. “Anyone who wishes to protect human life cannot at the same time pit people against one another, exclude them or relativise their dignity,” said Bishop Heiner Wilmer in his message to the march…
Of all the discourses he delivered in his nearly eight-year pontificate — with the exception of his 2013 resignation — Pope Benedict XVI’s September 12, 2006, address at the University of Regensburg sparked unprecedented global reaction. During his address, the pope cited the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus’ views about the relationship between…
Around the lamb I saw angels hovering during the whole time, for the space of one hour and a half or longer; I saw their wings fluttering, but I did not perceive their heads or faces, which were not turned to me’’ (Patrick Hill, witness). The angels seen at Knock belong to a reality deeply…
A federal judge on September 11 temporarily blocked Illinois from enforcing the state’s physician-assisted suicide law, which permits physicians to aid terminally ill adults in dying by suicide, against Catholic entities that challenged it in court. The judge granted a temporary restraining order to Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, two orders of Catholic nuns,…
Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, apostolic nuncio to the United States, discussed the need for a “moral voice” in artificial intelligence (AI) development during a panel discussion hosted by Georgetown University on September 9. The panel, titled “AI, Catholic Social Teaching, and Pope Leo’s Invitation to Dialogue with the World,” examined Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica…
Companionship, family, security, marriage gives us all of these. But what is God’s plan in designing it this way? We would like to share three principles, each drawn from Sacred Scripture, and each quietly at work in every ordinary marriage, including our own. Marriage is a sign, not just an arrangement St Paul writes in…
Fr Barry White
Fr John McCarthy