In the screen documentary about Edna O’Brien’s life, The Blue Road, made shortly before her death, the Co. Clare author said that one of her regrets was that she’d been so hopeless at managing money. She’d earned plenty of it, but she’d often been broke just the same. I’ve experienced, at a lesser level, similar…
Was the celebrity wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the Kansas football star player, a good thing for the common good? On the one hand, it advertises the significance and meaning of matrimony, in an era when marriage is so widely in decline. And Simon Harris would scarcely have greeted the Taylor-Travis nuptials with…
Jeffrey Donaldson can expect a tough time in prison for his crimes – paedophiles and rapists are lowest in the penitentiary caste system. But there’s one English priest who is willing to reach out to him, to offer redemption and healing. However, the Rev. Jonathan Aitken is no ordinary Anglican pastor. He’s been an MP,…
Pope Leo is one of the most popular and well-respected public figures in the world today, and his humanity and holiness have earned him that popularity. When the President of Peru announced that Leo will be visiting in November, there were wonderful pictures of the Holy Father previously travelling by mule in that country. It…
Maybe, in the face of all the negativity about the cost of – and reluctance about – starting a family, shouldn’t we honestly confront the facts of parenthood, and especially motherhood? There are many reasons why younger people say they are not having children – and as a recent Iona paper on rising childlessness pointed…
Ireland has one of the fastest-ageing populations in Europe, and most oldsters seem to be coping reasonably well – according to TCD’s Longitudinal Study on Ageing. (‘Tilda’). There are 789 Irish centenarians (including the diaspora) of whom 637 are women, and 152 men. In every study, women averagely live longer than men – more evidence…
Some years ago, I was attending a Sunday Mass in Co. Galway, when I came to realise that it was also the occasion for First Holy Communions. Well, that’s a lovely ceremony to behold, and adds extra grace to a summer morning. Didn’t Napoleon say that everyone remembers their First Communion for the rest of…
We live in troubled times, and in a time where everyone has a political opinion, sometimes strongly expressed. Sometimes a strong opinion is fitting. But do politics have to be everywhere? Getting a takeaway coffee at a small local café, I noticed they’d put up a new poster with the words “Free Palestine”. The poster…
I had a rather dull chicken dish last Sunday for my main meal, and, according to an Irish master butcher, Seán Kelly in Co. Mayo, this is increasingly typical. People are, he says, ditching lamb and roast beef in favour of chicken, because it’s cheaper (if more tasteless). Disappointingly, Mr Kelly suggests that the tradition…
Holly Cairns’s bill to amend abortion legislation in the Dáil this week has, obviously, prompted renewed debates about the termination of pregnancy. Leave aside the issue of the three-day ‘reflection period’ before the procedure, quite a few people are unsettled by the statistics: abortion in Ireland has risen from about 3,000 a year pre-2018 to…