The Sunday Gospel Gn 2:18-24 Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 Heb 2:9-11 Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12 Fr Joshua J. Whitfield As Eve to Adam in the purity of Eden, as bride to groom in the joy of a wedding: it is a primeval holiness, the holiness of a woman in love with a man in…
I believe the faith in Ireland is not dead. It’s like a bird in hibernation, waiting to awaken, says Anto Crossey It was November 2019, when Robert Nugent called 500 men to Derry. Like many others, I simply responded to the call, showing up that day without fully realising what lay ahead. The gathering was…
Michael R. Heinlein I’ve noticed a pattern lately. Whenever my 7-year-old son presents himself for Holy Communion to a minister unknown to him, he is routinely denied the sacrament. I find this fascinating. He does all the right things. He bows. He makes the sign of the cross. He waits patiently to say “Amen” before…
Laptop by Desmond Egan (The Goldsmith Press, € 20.00 / £16.00) William Adamson Desmond Egan once wrote that poetry is essentially a dialogue, an insight into the universal through the particular experience, and in his latest collection, Laptop, this thought is taken to a level of intensity rarely found in poetry today. The book itself is…
Bishop Robert Reed It’s that time of year, again, when the waking air has a chill crispness to it, and the hallways are lined with bookbags full of fresh spiral notebooks, binders still blank of the doodles of midwinter boredom and the good old marble-covered notebooks, as yet unsullied. Pencils have been sharpened, erasers are…
Jonah McKeown Letter from Rome Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, OP, archbishop of Vienna, said in a recent interview with a French Catholic magazine that in the face of rising secularisation and the growth of Islam in many historically Christian nations, Catholics should “trust in the work of grace” and remember that the Church is “an expert…
Last week, Pope Francis embarked on his 45th and most ambitious trip of his papacy, both in terms of distance and duration. It was a 12-day, four-country, two-continent odyssey; with stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore. The trip, which enabled Catholics in remote regions to see the Pope in the flesh prompted…
Hannah Brockhaus Pope Francis landed in Dili, the capital city of East Timor, on Monday last in the third stop on a September 2–13 trip to four countries in Southeast Asia and Oceania. One of the world’s newest nations — it became a sovereign state in 2002 — the majority-Catholic country is on a journey…
Alan Hynes If there is one genre of engagement with education policy in Ireland that is likely to prompt a unity of weary groans from all working within schools, it is politicians or campaigning groups ‘calling on’ schools to address some social ill through education. These generally fall into two broad categories: 1) calling on…
St Bernadette gives hope to young people facing the challenge of discerning their future, says Fr Barry White Lourdes has always been a place of prayer and healing in my family, especially during times of suffering and illness. My journey with Lourdes began in childhood, inspired by books and the 1943 film The Song of…