Church urged to stand up to media bias

Mags Gargan and Greg Daly ‘Resentment’ an inaccurate reporting Church leaders have been urged to stand up to negative bias in the media, after a recent spate of ‘Church-bashing’ during emotive debates around abortion. This comes after Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said there was a “justified resentment” among priests, religious and committed Catholics at being “unfairly…

A section of the crowd at a Rosary crusade on May 1 on a country road close to a Mass rock near Greencastle in Co. Tyrone, where a Canadian mining firm refused permission for a Catholic service last year. The Rosary will be said at the site every night during May. Photo: Mal McCann

Curial training event was ‘excellent’ – Marie Collins

Staff Reporter Marie Collins’ first training event for Vatican officials since her resignation from Pope Francis’ child protection commission was “encouraging” and “very positive”, the leading advocate has said. Mrs Collins announced her resignation in February from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, citing frustration with obstructive curial officials. Despite this, she joined…

Uniform plans ‘micro-management’

Government demands that schools reduce uniform costs to ease parents’ financial pressures have been criticised as reactive and unacceptable micro-management by the president of the body which represents faith-based schools in Ireland. Speaking at the AMCSS/JMB annual general meeting in Killarney, Fr Paul Connell said the planned changes would do “little or nothing to reduce…

Varied visions of Irish life since 1916

Felix M. Larkin Ireland: The Autobiography – One hundred years in the life of the nation, told by its people ed. by John Bowman (Penguin Ireland, €25/£20) Shakespeare’s stage Irishman in Henry V, Captain Macmorris, famously asks “What ish my nation?” He answers his own question with these words: “Ish a villain, and a bastard,…

Finding a place for values that last

Fr Vincent Sherlock Nobody was as surprised as myself. Ed Sheeran was playing his second concert in Croke Park and the reviews of the first concert were incredible. I thought about what a positive influence Ed had been in the lives of 160,000 plus people over two nights. My being there, I thought, had some…