Not so long ago, I travelled to a Catholic post-primary school – and was rather taken aback. At the entrance, beside the traditional Catholic images, was a Pride emblem which seemed to promote the interests of the LGBT agenda. The school was focused on inclusivity – and there was also a trans-themed poster on the girls’…
Growing up in an Irish seaside town, faith and music were as constant as the waves on the sand for the young Michael Ferguson. But his faith, unlike his music, was rather quiet. He was a Catholic in the mainly Protestant town of Portstewart – and has childhood memories of an IRA bomb wrecking the…
A priest friend has a rather colourful image in his kitchen, and when I first saw it, I was taken aback. I liked the picture well enough but I wondered why he had a picture of Bob Marley on his wall. He didn’t seem like the type. “That’s an interesting picture,” I said. “Yes, it’s…
When I first entered religious life, letters would arrive at our Falls Road convent in Belfast, addressed to Phyllis Bishop. Who is Phyllis Bishop, I wondered? Is she on the run from the mob? I would muse to myself. Eventually, I worked out that she was in fact, the oldest sister in our community –…
A line runs through my childhood, the time before I went to Canada, and the time after. Aged five, the Troubles put paid to my Irish upbringing; but, I well remember bobbing for apples in Belfast at Halloween. It was a simple enough game, hands behind your back, trying to bite a bouncing apple on…
It is not the worst thing to have happened in the Cathedral. After all, St Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered there in 1170, following a conflict with the King over the rights of the church. But Canterbury Cathedral, one of the oldest Christian heritage sites, has been made to look like ‘an…
I’m shopping for a church!” an American once told me. As a cradle Catholic, the notion seemed alien to me. Yet how many of us, followers of Christ, opt to choose and create a Church in our own image and likeness, to suit how we live? “I only believe half of it,” a well-known Catholic…
It’s been ninety-five years since Bill Gribbin was baptised and he is not only living out his Christian mission, as father, grandfather and great grandfather, but as sacristan of St Michael’s The Archangel parish in Belfast. Observing him prepare the altar and the incense for a requiem mass last week, it occurred to me, he…
Then Mark Lenaghan was jailed in the 1980s, he encountered a priest who would lead him back to Christ – and along an amazing path to ordination as a permanent deacon. In the coming weeks, a fresh batch of men will take this path, including five from the Dioceses of Armagh and Dromore. They will…
Divisive, dangerous and provocative – that’s how some in the media described American activist Charlie Kirk, after he was shot dead in Utah just days ago. “The answers he gave were astonishing!” said one Sky TV commentator, who cited his “outlandish” pro-life position and Kirk’s “dislike of abortion” – as if killing a child in…