A leaflet dropped through my door the other day. The Belfast councillor Donal Lyons was promoting a new scheme to recycle glass bottles. Commendable. Except Cllr Lyons represents the SDLP which has proved a major disappointment. I would like to vote for Donal Lyons. Originally from Dublin, he seems like a decent, gentle person. But…
I was baptised in a converted aeroplane hangar – and I’m always ready for take-off, though sometimes I have crash-landed and messed up my baptismal gown! I was clothed in Christ at St Agnes’ Church, which was built in Belfast after the Second World War. I almost missed my take-off. “You’re too late,” the priest…
Around 500 people poured out of St Patrick’s Church, Dungiven, Co. Derry, last Friday to commemorate the first flame lit by Ireland’s apostle on the Hill of Slane in 433AD. The parish priest, Fr Gerry Sweeney, lit a symbolic fire of faith, hope and love outside the church as hundreds gathered after a week-long Lenten retreat…
It was the summer of 1986 when the teenage Gerry Sweeney drifted away from the sacraments. “I had been missing Mass and I knew something wasn’t right and I thought I better do something about it,” he recalls. He had been covering his tracks by getting other pals to pick up the parish bulletin. His…
It was a parish priest who gave award-winning Irish filmmaker Campbell Miller the break he so badly needed. Without the encouragement of Fr Colin Crossey, from Newcastle, Co. Down, Miller might not have pursued his talent which is about to be showcased in the United States. His latest docudrama, St Patrick – The Hidden Years,…
Few lessons from my days at primary school stand out, but I do remember one class very clearly. A grammar lesson that was really about inclusive language and equality. Our teacher told us that the word “chairman” was wrong. It should be chairperson, and “his” should be “his or hers”. This appealed to my sense…
Experience, wrote CS Lewis, is a brutal teacher. And former politician Peter Mandelson, who has been disgraced over his ties to notorious sex offender and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, once taught me a lesson. We were both attending one of those awful receptions for “the great and the good”. I was there as a BBC…
For almost 30 years, Bernie Smyth has been at the forefront of the pro-life movement in the north of Ireland – taking the battle against abortion to the streets, television studios – even the courts. But, now that the law in Ireland, north and south, facilitates abortion, there’s been a subtle shift after years of…
It was early autumn in 1987, when a Catholic couple, named Mary and Joseph, approached their Parish Priest in Belfast with a request – which, looking back, was clearly an inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The couple had been married on February 11, 1950, the Feast of our Lady of Lourdes, and wished to express…
A divine invitation came my way the other day: to look to the rock from which I was hewn. Actually, it was not put quite like Isaiah’s words in chapter 51, verse one. But those words echoed and so I’m heading to Downpatrick this Sunday, on the first day of the Irish Spring, as the…