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…
I’m usually pleased to see Irish people achieve renown and an international status – from historic figures like Msgr O’Flaherty to contemporary ones like Colm Toibín or even the bumptious Michael O’Leary of Ryanair. But it’s only recently dawned on me that a sensational Irish celebrity brand now enjoying global recognition are – a bunch…
While the British parliament was engaged in debating the Assisted Dying Bill (which ran out of time last week, and therefore fell) – a personal and dramatic story emerged to capture public attention. Wendy Duffy was a former care worker in the West Midlands of England, although, by her own admission, she came originally from…
The online publication of the 1926 Census, available to all without charge, is a great achievement by the National Archives, and its director, Orlaith McBride. As the writer Joseph O’Connor has commented – it “will bring revelation and amazement to Irish people all over the world, a sense of belonging when we most need it.”…
Ireland is famously a friendly country, and most visitors still seem to find a welcoming and sociable attitude to life here. So it seems a puzzle as to why there are so many studies and reports about the ‘epidemic’ of loneliness in this country. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre claims that 20% of Irish…
As I have sometimes mentioned, I grew up in Sandymount, a serene seaside suburb of Dublin 4, where Catholic and Protestant neighbours were generally on good terms, even though they kept separate spheres in education and recreation. Our immediate neighbours were Methodist and Presbyterian, whose services of worship were Bible-based and austere. But we also…
We used to call them ‘holy pictures’ back in the long-ago days of my convent education – cheap little copies of paintings by Raphael and Botticelli, on which we schoolgirls would write messages to each other on the obverse side. And now I realise how influential these images were in illuminating the epic events of…