CEO of the Catholic Grandparents Association (CGA), Catherine Wiley, said the advice she is giving out to grandparents in the wake of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) ad is to trust their instincts. “Don’t let this make you doubt yourselves,” she said to The Irish Catholic. “Keep loving, keep hugging, and trust your instincts.…
Archbishop Eamon Martin has been elected Vice-President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) for a five-year term, 2026-2031. The election took place on October 29, as the bishops assembled for their annual gathering in Salzburg, Austria, on October 27-30. Archbishop Martin will now work with Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, Lithuania, who was…
There’s one form of education that is in decline in both Ireland and Britain: boarding school. Only 25 schools in Ireland are now of the boarding variety: in the 1960s there were around 125. The announced closure of Glenstal Abbey as a boarding school is perhaps a symbolic moment. In Britain, boarding schools have declined…
The Parish of Duneane in Co. Antrim will mount and bless a primitive Holy Water font on Sunday, November 8, discovered on a Lough Neagh monastic site a few years ago. Speaking to this newspaper about the restoration process, historian Patrick McAteer said the font was discovered on the Middle Island in Lough Neagh, which…
Among the ultra-progressive, it is now the done thing not to tell people what the sex is of their newborn child. Declaring to the world that the child is a boy or a girl is considered an unfair imposition of a gender stereotype on the child. The child should be given the freedom to decide…
A sunny day, a great welcome with coffee, tea and smiles and a walk in the countryside of Kildare Town: this is a brief summary of the day organised by the Focolare Movement at Solas Bhride Centre in October. The aim was to get to know St Brigid of Kildare, the order of the Sisters…
November is a sombre month. The summer is done. The leaves are falling from the trees. The cycle of life and death is moving on. The dead lists lie at the foot of the altar in the chapel, and people remember and pray for all those who have gone. It can be a time of…
“When I found out I was pregnant, the road was just full of fog, and I couldn’t see clearly anymore.” That’s how Amy describes discovering she was pregnant with her daughter, Amaya. Having experienced childhood trauma and foster care as a teenager, Amy knew what it felt like to have her voice taken away and…
Both the Primate of All Ireland and the Bishop of Limerick have said some parishes are on the brink of closure. What happens when parishes are no longer financially viable or cannot be maintained? During his opening address to the National Synodal Assembly, Archbishop Eamon Martin warned that “many of our parishes and even our…
“If you get the mother right, then you get Jesus right, and you get the Church right.” That, Dr Mark Miravalle told The Irish Catholic, is why Mary matters so much to Catholic theology. It is a conviction he has spent most of his academic life studying and defending. Dr Miravalle is an American theologian…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Nuala O’Loan