It was enterprising for the stand-up comedian, Abie Philbin Bowman to provide unbelieving Irish people with an alternative to Sunday church-going. Abie launched his ‘Godless’ Assembly meetings in November, at the Little Museum of Dublin, and about 100 people – atheists, humanists and science enthusiasts – turned up. The idea is that those who are…

The Methodists pioneered the great temperance movements of the Victorian era – and were so successful at overcoming addiction to alcohol, especially among poor people who were being ruined by penny gin – that their  campaigns have had many imitators since. Even the Pioneers learned from the Methodists (and from the great Fr Mathew). So…

The late President Kennedy is remembered fondly, in Ireland, as the first Irish-American President of the United States – although he wasn’t quite the first: there were quite a few Irish-American presidents before him, but they were from Ulster-Irish (generally Presbyterian) stock and that, somehow, discounted them. But JFK was the first Irish Catholic American…

I rang the hairdresser to say I had to be 10 minutes late for the hairdo: my husband is disabled, I explained, and I had to pick up some medications for him which delayed me. That was fine, and as the young woman was cutting my hair she asked chattily: “So, how long has your…

The recent ‘child removal’ cases are a worrying development, writes Mary Kenny

We need some straight talking about values, writes Mary Kenny

We have just seen a campaign for Mental Health Week, which will surely be a help and a support to anyone experiencing the affliction of depression, or of conditions like bi-polar disorder. These illnesses can be treated, and there should be no cause for shame or stigma. But sometimes such campaigns fail to distinguish between…

Pope Francis is developing the kind of persona, for the Italians, that a much-loved monarch can represent, writes Mary Kenny

Last week, I encountered the senior executive at RTÉ who is responsible for the religious output. In the course of conversation, I suggested to him that they might consider changing the word ‘religion’ to ‘faith’. He was doubtful. But there were some thoughts that religious programming might be altered to the ‘spiritual’ rather than the…