‘F’ words are high on my agenda at the moment. With an opening like that I suppose there is a chance you will read further. In recent weeks I have been stopped in my tracks by two heart-breaking personal situations. Firstly, a young couple whose wedding I participated in last year had the joy of…

Recently I found myself surprisingly grateful to Alison O’Connor, journalist and regular contributor to radio and television panels. Ms O’Connor was a member of the panel on Brendan O’Connor’s The Cutting Edge on RTÉ One. One of the items discussed was abortion. Ms O’Connor’s contribution was as follows: as a woman who found it particularly…

Recently my brother and his wife renovated our family home where we all grew up. I was very happy that along with the many wonderful changes they have made they retained the Sacred Heart lamp and picture which had been there since my late father and mother moved in almost 60 years ago. The practice…

Last Sunday we had the familiar Gospel of Doubting Thomas. I’m always intrigued that the Gospel goes out of its way to refer to as “Thomas called the Twin”. Nowhere to my knowledge do we ever hear who Thomas’s other twin is. I wonder if that might be deliberate because it allows for a more…

One of the country’s large general hospitals recently made a small but very significant change. It renamed all of its wards. Previously the wards had saints’ names: ‘St Michael’s Ward’, ‘St Brigid’s Ward’, etc. Such names were commonplace in many hospitals around Ireland and I suppose the practice of naming wards – and indeed whole…

“There are burdens that we all carry, some are very obvious and others we take great care to hide…The invitation of Jesus on the cross is to hand over these burdens to him”, writes Fr Martin Delaney A Jesuit friend shared with me his experience of ministering in a detention centre in Malta some years…

“Governments and great political movements have tried to take away the sins of the world and have often ended up becoming more corrupt and destructive themselves”, writes Fr Martin Delaney A recent Sunday gospel proclaimed the familiar words: “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” With those…