Dear Editor, This is a great time to be Catholic. We now go to Mass, not blindly because everybody else does, but because we choose to. Anyone who knows GK Chesterton and JRR Tolkien knows we live in the lands of long defeats. We are not supposed to win this side of the grave. Your…
Courtney McGrail
Behind the scenes at the Department of Education
Joe Carroll John Walshe had been the most experienced education correspondent in the Irish media when Ruairi Quinn asked him to join his team as a special adviser when he took over as Minister for Education in 2011. Walshe could not resist becoming poacher turned gamekeeper and now he gives an entertaining insider’s view…
The path back to Rome
Sean Ryan This little red book of 132 pages is a gem. While telling the story of Tom Peterson, founder of the Catholics Come Home organisation, it also emphasises the duty of every baptised Catholic to use their talents to spread the Good News. Peterson was a marketing and advertising guru, whose practice of his faith…
The reality of the spiritual world
The Evidence for God: The Case for the Existence of the Spiritual Dimension by Keith Ward (Darton, Longman & Todd, £9.99).
No urgency for marriage referendum
Dear Editor, Ireland is a wee country, led by a wobbly Government loaded with the domestic and social problems of a post austerity regime. Isn’t it strange to imagine a referendum to change the definition of marriage to permit two people of the same sex to marry one another, should already be gathering momentum among certain…
Difference between died and passed
Dear Editor, I do not contradict Andrew O'Donnell's "Notebook" (IC 01/01/2015), but I do not like, in his first paragraph, that he said that Brian Farrell had "passed", when he meant ‘died’. That word is often used nowadays, with the implication that nobody ever dies, but only passes from one life to another. Of course,…
Symbols of the Spirit
Cathal Barry takes a look at the some of the symbols of the Holy Spirit in the Bible
Taking aim at your future goals
There is a difference between making resolutions and setting new goals, writes Wendy Grace
Building confidence peer to peer
Sarah Langan describes the work of the Meitheal youth peer ministry programme
Ireland’s very troubled relations with the Vatican during the post-war years
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy: Vol. IX 1948-1951 ed. by Catriona Crowe, Ronan Fanning and Michael Kennedy (Royal Irish Academy, €50.00)