Here’s a thing: I really would like to hear a sermon on the tangled issue of finance.  It could be called ‘the moral maze of money.’ What are we to make of waking up each morning to the heated discussions about ‘the markets’? We tremble to hear that the Nikkei (Japan) has crashed, the Hang…

A quiet country retreat in County Down last week began rather unexpectedly when my friend and I spotted a sheep caught in some wire at the edge of a field. A couple of city slickers, we were a bit hesitant. But my friend was concerned enough to knock on a local door that Saturday evening.…

Last weekend, the news broke that disgraced former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick had died on April 3. The former cardinal was laicised by Pope Francis in February 2019, following revelations of his serial sexual molestation of male teenagers and adult seminarians. For those unfamiliar with his history, as his name suggests, McCarrick…

One of the most hostile political parties towards the Catholic Church in Ireland today is the Social Democrats. When the announcement was made that the National Maternity Hospital was moving to a new location alongside St Vincent’s hospital, there was outrage in certain quarters because at that point St Vincent’s was still linked to the…

We are now a quarter of the way into the Jubilee Year of Hope. Our church banners remind us that we are in a special time. Some parishioners have already made the pilgrimage to Rome, and others may go in the months ahead. But I sometimes wonder: if I asked the average Catholic—perhaps even a…