It was a small, almost hidden message that captured the essence of Aoife Shelly’s life. In the hospital, while her family kept vigil at her bedside, an alarm went off on her phone. When they reached for it to silence the alarm, they found a note in her notifications: “10pm: Time for Prayer.” In the…
We are now a quarter of the way into the Jubilee Year of Hope. Our church banners remind us that we are in a special time. Some parishioners have already made the pilgrimage to Rome, and others may go in the months ahead. But I sometimes wonder: if I asked the average Catholic—perhaps even a…
Back in the days of the Wild West in the United States, the primary means of transportation was the stagecoach. We’ve seen people riding in stagecoaches in Western movies. What we might not know is that the stagecoach had three different classes of tickets. However, the distinction between classes had nothing to do with the…
I’m writing this piece at the end of the week which began calmly enough on Sunday the January 19 and ended calmly on Saturday January 25. The five days in between gave us the wildest weather storm ever recorded in Ireland. One of my priest friends from Cork proudly sent me an image of the…
One Green Party politician described their recent election experience as being spat out by the Irish people. It is somewhat ironic that while there is general agreement that climate change is the great issue of our generation, the one political party dedicated to highlighting the problem and coming up with solutions is the one that…
I can recall, when living in the United States almost twenty years ago, listening to an interview on National Public Radio with Mary Robinson. The American interviewer enthusiastically introduced Mrs Robinson as the first ever woman to be President of Ireland. During the interview Mrs Robinson was asked if she could see the day when…
Notebook This month I want to share three distinct reflections with a common thread. The recent scoping enquiry into abuse perpetrated in schools run by Catholic religious orders revealed another very sad chapter in our Irish social history. The media follow up inevitably led to an avalanche of personal stories detailing the physical, emotional and…
In the aftermath of the Ryan Tubridy saga which engulfed RTÉ in a sea of negative publicity for much of last year I resisted the temptation to follow so many other citizens who stopped paying their licence fee. However, I’m beginning to reconsider for the simple reason that I’m fed up with the constant anti-Catholic…
Notebook I think it was former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds who said in his resignation speech; “it is the little things that can trip you up”. I’m sure President Biden might agree. He mixed up the names of a few world leaders and it cost him his chance of a second term. But perhaps the incident…
Every so often I am made more acutely aware of how I live in a very changing Ireland. Our country is increasingly viewed across the world as a modern progressive republic which has shaken off the destructive influence and interference of institutional religion, particularly the Catholic Church. Sometimes this change happens in very public ways…