Category: Feature

Getting the most from the Easter Triduum

If we enter fully into Holy Week our observance of Lent and our celebration of Easter will be deepened beyond measure, 
writes Fr Martin Browne OSB   I got a promotional email from a hotel during the week, trying to interest me in some of their seasonal special offers. It loudly proclaimed that “Easter is for…

Limerick laughter in Dominican Youth Club

Dominican sisters tell Chai Brady about their new youth group   Young people are longing to be “known and loved” says a Dominican sister based in Limerick, and that’s exactly what her order intend to let them know. Coming from Nashville, Tennessee, Sr Mara Grace and her three fellow sisters have been organising events and…

Exploring a pilgrim landscape

Pilgrimage Supplement 2019 – Pathways With Purpose Pilgrim paths follow many routes in Ireland and abroad, Greg Daly learns   Ireland’s religious landscape may have changed dramatically over recent decades, but according to Knock’s Fr Richard Gibbons, pilgrimage sites are still vibrant places. “I think that when people come to a religious site, it might…

Bringing the Camino home

Pilgrimage Supplement 2019 – Pathways With Purpose Learning to live the Camino in our everyday lives is the key lesson we need from Europe’s most famous pilgrimage, John Brierley tells Greg Daly   With the possible exception of Martin Sheen, the star of 2010’s The Way, there can be few people in the English-speaking world…

Lough Derg 
gets the TV treatment

Young pilgrims are the ‘lifeblood’ of an ancient Irish site, writes Colm Fitzpatrick   There aren’t many Irish historical events or places that elicit more of a reaction or moment of nostalgia than the Lough Derg pilgrimage; the mere mention of this 5th Century island usually evokes memories of fatigue and hunger, but also respite…

Rebuilding a world of relationships

The Church may hold the keys to reviving civic society, a top Anglican theologian tells Greg Daly   “Catholic social teaching,” wrote the Guardian columnist Andrew Brown some years ago, in a column otherwise largely critical of the Church, “and the attempts to produce an economics centred around the needs of humans, rather than of…

Building a thinking Church

A medieval friar may hold the keys to tackling modern confusion, Greg Daly is told   Today’s young people have a natural craving for a coherent vision of the world and our universities are not helping them towards this, Fr Thomas White OP says, following numerous meetings with students and young academics in top universities…

Martyrs can save a dying Church

The murder of dozens of martyrs was nothing short of a devastating tragedy, but it is also an example of the courage and enduring faith of Egypt’s persecuted Christian community. A new book by a renowned German author details his travels to one of the small villages these men came from. He meets their families…