The View The diocese of Kildare and Leighlin recently announced a timeline for the introduction of lay-led liturgies and the introduction of what is called a “sustainable Mass schedule” by the first Sunday in Lent in February 2023. It is far from the first Irish diocese to announce such measures. Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare…
The View Funeral after funeral. That is how this summer has been for me — sudden deaths, accidents, and deaths that were a long time in coming but shocking, nonetheless. There were funerals of young people or young at heart people, interspersed with anniversary masses. Oddly, perhaps the most difficult funeral was the one I…
The overturn of Roe vs Wade is a great victory for the pro-life movement but it is also the start of a bigger battle. The considerable resources of the pro-choice movement, celebrities and influencers will all be marshalled. The singer Lizzo has pledged half a million to Planned Parenthood already and performers at Glastonbury have…
The View Long ago in a different century, I was a member of a college drama society. One of the plays we put on was a Thornton Wilder piece called Our Town. In the course of that play (spoiler alert) there is an unashamed tear-jerker moment. Emily, a 26-year-old who has died, is allowed to…
The View Pope Francis hates it. Thomas Aquinas dedicated a section of the Summa Theologica to it, analysing all the different ways we can indulge in it. Robin Dunbar, the primatologist and anthropologist, judged it to be “the core of human social relationships, indeed of society itself. Without [it], there would be no society”. We…
The View At Mass on Sunday, the priest mentioned that we should be praying for Ukrainians but also for the Russian people. A young boy reacted immediately, asking his mother and grandmother in a loud whisper, “why should we pray for the Russians?” What a great question. Given the ongoing murderous assault on Ukraine, which…
The View Times are hard for many people and particularly so for people of faith, who see their cherished values being undermined in so many different ways. That’s why I found a recent event that both my adult daughters were involved in so cheering. Along with seven other leaders, they took a group of almost…
The View The pandemic has left an already battered Church facing even more challenges, including financial woes. Great uncertainty hangs over 2022 but that is true of every year. Do we have unrealistic expectations of safety and comfort? Our ancestors had lower expectations of life because they knew disaster could strike at any moment. I…
The View Advent and Christmas are meant to be seasons of hope and joy. Nonetheless, many people have found 2021 much more distressing than 2020, as our resilience has been tested by the ongoing strain of the pandemic and the restrictions that accompany it. We have seen our church-going friends give up going to Mass,…
Recently, I came across the beautiful Litany of Trust for the first time. It was written by Sr Faustina Maria Pia Bianchi S.V., a member of the Sisters Of Life, an order founded by Cardinal John O’Connor in 1991 to uphold a culture of life. This modern-day Sr Faustina was given the name at Baptism,…