Everything must be experienced – and understood – in context. And the context in which I remember the Birmingham bombings – when 21 mostly young people died in two Birmingham pubs targeted by the Provisional IRA in 1974 – is personal. I had just had a baby who wasn’t, in the first weeks, very well…
I was sorry to learn of the death of Limerick’s Nora Bennis on February 11, aged 78. Nora had been a defender of a woman’s right to be a homemaker, founding the Irish Mothers Working at Home Association as well as leading the Solidarity Movement which supported family and Faith values. She stood for election to…
St Patrick’s Day, as we all know, has in recent years become an occasion for “marketing” Ireland in various corners of the globe. The shiny new liberal Ireland is merchandised in such a way that it will attract many more investors, customers and traders. I’m all for investment, trade and opportunities for jobs – who…
Some years ago, I was invited to accompany an Australian right-to-life group to a witness vigil outside a Melbourne abortion clinic. I was staying with one of the women involved in the event, so I said I would. It was a peaceful and respectful gathering. The participants were seated on a wall, or on the…
You can change your mind about a subject not just once, but several times. The subject over which I have vacillated in the course of my lifetime is that of censorship. As a young person, I was vehemently against censorship, largely because both movies and books were subject to sometimes quite draconian censorship: either the…
Ireland is to have a referendum in the near future on liberalising the divorce law, and if other countries are an example of how that usually pans out, easier and quicker divorce will very probably follow. The arguments for more liberal divorce are simple: why force a couple to stay together when they are unhappy?…
When it comes to adopted people acquiring the right to trace their birth parents, I can imagine various scenarios, drawn partly from experience of cases I’ve known. One is of an older woman who, back in the 1960s, had a baby when single. At the time, she was assured by everyone who knew of her…
Some people of my generation (born in the 1940s) refer to young folk as “snowflakes”: fragile and likely to dissolve under stress. This is unkind and mostly untrue. Most young people I meet are very nice, thoughtful and idealistic. But, certainly, they have been raised in a gentler and more protective way, and adulthood has…
Ireland’s welcome to immigrants – from the EU and elsewhere – is admirable, and, at an anecdotal level, I have heard plenty of praise around the country about such young people who come to Ireland to work. The catering and hotel trade, I’ve often heard it said, just couldn’t function without them. I even asked…
More people go to a church over the Christmas period than at any other time of the year. So, shouldn’t the churches use this opportunity to attract more church-going right through the year? Some might call this a modern marketing opportunity. St Paul would call it evangelisation. If I were a marketing consultant, I would…