It is not now an infrequent occurrence to meet someone who will observe of contemporary Ireland that “it’s not the country I grew up in”. Some will go further and say “it doesn’t feel like home anymore”. At a basic level, the world and society are always changing. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544BC…
The Church in Ireland has a humble yet vital contribution to make to the universal Church on safeguarding, Archbishop Eamon Martin tells Michael Kelly All eyes will be in Rome next month for an unprecedented meeting of bishops to discuss the devastating issues of clerical abuse scandals in the universal Church. While the Church…
The idea of ethos can sometimes be a thorny issue. In a world which often prides a utilitarian approach to education over a holistic vision of the human person, ethos can get reduced to 15 or 20 minutes of religious education every now and then. When one speaks of ethos to politicians, they will often…
In just two months’ time, Pope Francis will mark six years on the Throne of St Peter. For many, Cardinal Bergoglio came from nowhere. The Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires was little known amongst Catholics, though he had made a deep and abiding impression on the College of Cardinals. Remember when Benedict XVI announced that…
In her famous annus horribilis speech in 1992, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II described the fading year as one which “is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure”. Queen Elizabeth was reflecting on the fact that 1992 had seen her son the Duke of York separate from his wife, the Princess…
Have you ever wondered what it was like for Mary and Joseph to make the journey to Bethlehem? Or, for Jesus and his disciples to make the trip from the Galilee to Jerusalem? From the earliest times, Christians from all over the world have gone to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of…
Even in a country like Ireland where the story of the Nativity is well known, the humble narrative of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem still has the power to captivate the imagination. All but the most jaded and cynical of post-Catholics surely cannot find themselves unmoved at the thought of the Virgin Mary hearing the message…
As scandalous headlines go it’s hard to compete with ‘nuns spend $500,000 school donations in Casino’. While the secular media is having a field day reporting the details of the story and anti-Church commentators are dining out on the added discomfort and embarrassment to Catholics, the scandal is only compounded by the fact that the…
Minister for Health Simon Harris is part of a breed of politicians who get into the game at a young age. He has never had a job outside of politics. Before running for election himself, he served as an assistant to Francis Fitzgerald. At the tender age of 25, Mr Harris was elected to the…