I’ve often wondered what it is like to experience a vocation as a cloistered nun, and now I think I understand what it’s all about. Catherine Coldstream is an Englishwoman who grew up in a somewhat Bohemian household, and after her father died, she felt adrift in the world. In her twenties, she became a…
I’ve been following developments in French politics – and culture – for some years, and I’m not at all surprised at the victory for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in the first round of the parliamentary elections. It’s all been brewing for a long time. As anyone who has read the writings of French…
Momentum is building for the All Ireland Rally for Life which is taking place in Dublin on July 6. I’m sure it will be a very successful occasion, and a happy occasion too. What’s been remarkable about this annual event is the positive buzz around the gathering, the marches and speeches. It’s obviously all about…
We have certainly seen, in recent years, the onward march of the cashless society. First, there were credit cards, which began to make their appearance in the latter half of the 20th century. Subsequently, there were bank debit cards, which allowed us to pay for an item via ‘chip and pin’. Then, in the 1990s,…
We often hear rallying calls to get more women into politics – and I’m all for supporting such encouragement. Indeed, plenty of impressive women emerged in last week’s local elections. In the context of the EU, it’s now predicted that three women are seen as the ‘queens of Europe’ – and likely to dominate the…
O’Connell Street is surely Ireland’s best-known thoroughfare, named after ‘The Liberator’, Daniel O’Connell just a hundred years ago, in 1924. How interesting to learn, from Christine Casey’s peerless architectural survey of Dublin, that the city Corporation had voted to change the name of Sackville Street 40 years previously, in 1884, but the local residents objected.…
Around the beginning of this century, I worked on London newspaper alongside a lively and admirable writer, Andrew Pierce. I came to know that Andrew was adopted, and just recently he has published an account of his search for his birth mother, ‘Finding Margaret’. Margaret’s story was not an unusual one. She was a nurse…
Tony O’Reilly, who died at the weekend, did a lot for Ireland, quite beyond inventing the “Kerrygold” butter brand, although that is a noteworthy success. It was also about rebranding Ireland itself, as a country where people could thrive. In his unstinting work for the Ireland Funds, he advanced the Peace Process and worked consistently to…
When I was a teenager – maybe about 16 – a friend and I decided to follow a fad of “decadence”. We weren’t all that sure what “decadence” was, but we knew it had little to do with normal life in our then cosy village of Sandymount in Dublin. But teenagers soon find out about…
There is a contradiction at the heart of much Catholic discourse over the future of the Church – and faith. Or so it seems to me. The experience of synodality indicates that we must face a future in which there is more involvement by the laity, and less “clericalism”. There is much criticism of times…