For the retention and restoration of the faith in this city, no place contributed so much as the blessed District of Hannahstown. To its hills in times of persecution, our people rushed for safety. Its secluded spots supplied their places of worship, and its homes and caves gave protection to the priests who braved all…
In a few days, Taoiseach Micheal Martin is due to meet President Donald Trump in the White House. It will almost certainly take place on St Patrick’s Day itself, although last year that was not the case. Maybe the current global tumult will derail things. I managed to get into the White House myself years…
We celebrate the feast of St Patrick this year, conscious of the approaching centenary of his arrival in Ireland. Although we don’t know for certain the precise year of Patrick’s arrival and knowing that he certainly wasn’t the first Christian in Ireland, the date of 432 will be forever associated with the arrival of the…
As Ireland becomes some kind of strange hybrid Catholic/post-Catholic/secular/New Age society which none of us fully understands, the Church finds itself affected in all sorts of ways, not least what happens at big events like baptisms, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, weddings, and funerals. It is at these events that lots of post-Catholics, cultural Catholics, ‘bouncy…
After more than thirty years working in Catholic education I have learned not to be alarmed easily by legislative change. Education is constantly evolving. Policies change. Language adapts. Governments revise frameworks. But every so often, a development occurs that points to something much deeper than routine reform. It signals a change in first principles. Last…
The paradox at the heart of the current Irish media landscape is that the broadcasting regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, wants to maintain public trust and combat disinformation at the same time as it uncritically adopts gender identity beliefs. Pushing the belief that men can be women and that women are not entitled to single-sex spaces…
Ireland is often described as a land unusually rich in the art of written memory, with a wealth of books, illuminated manuscripts, and a deep tradition of scholastic learning. From the early Middle Ages, its monasteries produced a vast array of annals, genealogies, saints’ vitae, and legal texts in seemingly unprecedented quantities. The Irish monasteries…
Various expert reports suggest that around 2% of the world’s population is transgender (trans). In other words, the number of people feeling that their gender identity does not align with their biological sex is very small. This condition is also known as gender dysphoria. In the worlds of medicine and psychotherapy, there is deep disagreement…
There’s a programme on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday evenings called ‘The Moral Maze’ (which my colleague Brendan O’Regan has on occasions reviewed). It approaches a series of topical questions within the framework not just of debate, but with the focus on the moral analysis. What is the right thing to do? What is the…
It was a parish priest who gave award-winning Irish filmmaker Campbell Miller the break he so badly needed. Without the encouragement of Fr Colin Crossey, from Newcastle, Co. Down, Miller might not have pursued his talent which is about to be showcased in the United States. His latest docudrama, St Patrick – The Hidden Years,…
David Quinn
Mary Kenny
Martina Purdy