I suspect that many women have divided feelings on the subject of ‘drag queens’ – chaps who dress up in women’s clothes, with an over-exaggerated presentation of female hair, make-up and gestures. Some find it amusing; others feel that it takes a mocking view of femininity – rather as black people have objected to whites…
If I don’t appear at my local church over a couple of Sundays, other parishioners are kind enough to notice my absence: people very sweetly ask me afterwards if I’ve been away – usually the reason – and if I had a pleasant trip. One of the social advantages of being part of a parish…
Michael D. Higgins is a very popular president, and I think there’s a special reason why he is well suited to the Irish temperament. Many outsiders who have observed Ireland and the Irish have remarked that a feature of Irish life is a difference between what people say in the public sphere – and what…
The idea of same-sex marriage was only seriously suggested in the 1990s, and one of the earliest advocates for this cause was the Catholic conservative journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan. At first, the gay community was divided about same-sex marriage – and some are still opposed to it” Mr Sullivan, who is from an Irish…
There’s a chap in our neighbourhood who, on having to take early retirement, began baking bread as a hobby. And now he delivers a delicious loaf to me every Monday morning for a modest fee. There’s a mighty difference between a home-baked loaf and a supermarket product, and I’ve come to appreciate the taste of…
We didn’t talk a lot about the British royal family when I was growing up in Dublin – those far-off days were before the era of mass media and talking about royalty wasn’t considered, understandably, a republican virtue. But I do recall, aged six, the occasion when Elizabeth II became Queen of England, in 1952,…
Is stealing wrong? I think most of us have been taught that it is, deriving from the Ten Commandments. Theft hurts not only the victim, but the common good, since it diminishes trust in society. But in Britain, Andy Cooke, chief inspector of Her Majesty’s Constabulary, has instructed his officers to ‘go easy’ on those…
Hopefully, all parties involved will do their best, and in good faith, to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol problem, and the vexatious bureaucracy involved in transporting a Marks & Spencer comestible from Cheshire to Belfast. Bertie Ahern – who brought so much to the peace process – says that with enough patient negotiation, it can…
I wouldn’t have voted for Sinn Féin in the Stormont elections and in general I am not an admirer of the party as it is presently constituted. It has changed a lot since my Galwegian maternal grandmother, Mary Conroy, joined it in the early days, soon after 1905 – supportive of its agenda of Irish…
There was a time when the laity didn’t take it upon themselves to advise a bishop, and the distance was maintained between the See and the flock. But we are moving at a different tempo now, as the new Bishop of Galway, Michael Duignan, indicated at his installation last weekend. Synodial measures are encouraging the…