The View All saints are extraordinary, in the sense that they manage to turn their lives and wills over to God and through his grace achieve heroic virtue. John Henry Newman is perhaps more extraordinary than most because of the extent of his natural gifts. James Joyce wrote to his long-suffering English patron, Harriet Weaver,…
The View If you build it, they will come. This famous catchphrase from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams is actually a misquote. In the film, an Iowa corn farmer played by Kevin Costner is walking through his fields one night when he hears a disembodied voice saying: “If you build it, he will…
The View Every so often, I come across a book that I feel is worth sharing with readers, and Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Drs John and Julie Gottman is one such. The book concerns how to deepen relationships through a series of dates planned to facilitate in-depth conversations.…
The View Stewardship of the environment is a key Catholic value. Sometimes it is frustratingly hard to implement this value as families and individuals. I am sure that most of us were horrified by the recently published photos of Little Skellig island in Kerry. Gannets are plucking from the sea plastic debris, such as…
There are many tragic aspects to the recent abortion in Holles Street of a healthy baby misdiagnosed with a life-limiting condition, but one thing was sure. Leo Varadkar is entirely wrong when he described it as an “individual tragedy”. It was not an individual tragedy. It was a systemic failure caused firstly, by legalising abortion…
The View The upcoming referendum proposing the relaxation of the Constitutional divorce provisions is likely to be passed. It should act as a spur for the Catholic Church to reconsider its attitude to marriage on two fronts: whether it will continue to act as a solemniser for civil marriages and whether the current approach…
The View In recent times, there has been a media frenzy about Tiger Roll, the brave little horse that won the Aintree Grand National for the second time. But the fact that a horse died at the Grand National, the Willie Mullins-trained Up For Review, has received far less coverage. The horse was seen…
The View There are billboards for Hozier’s new album, Wasteland, Baby!, all over the place. In a Guardian Question and Answer session the singer (Andrew Hozier-Byrne) revealed that he has Seamus Heaney’s last words tattooed on his arm. Seamus Heaney had texted ‘noli timere’ which means, “do not be afraid”, to his wife, Marie,…
The View The Pope’s recent visit to the United Arab Emirates highlighted the issue of relations with Islam. It has been a recurring theme of this pontificate. It was also a major concern of Pope Benedict, although he was unfairly caricatured as anti-Islamic after his much mis-quoted Regensberg Address in 2006. Far from attacking…
The View Two recent incidents nudged my conscience. The first was a young woman who told me that something from one of my talks had lingered with her and she had tried to implement it. The topic mentioned was moral licensing, in the sense of feeling that I am such a good Christian that…