I once carried out a survey of priests in a deanery conference regarding weddings and funerals. People generally would see a wedding as a happy occasion, something to enjoy, while funerals might be seen as events to be avoided. The priests in my circle were asked which they preferred to be involved in leading –…

Editor’s Comment   I’m not one for media boycotts. I think Newstalk’s decision to ban journalists from The Irish Times from appearing on programmes is childish. But, I likewise think it petulant of people from The Irish Times like Fintan O’Toole and Una Mullally to declare that they were boycotting Newstalk over George Hook’s now…

Approached with moderation and admixed with common sense, “mindfulness” seems a harmless enough practice. Deriving from Buddhist thinking, the modern application may help people to “improve their mind by focusing on a positive object”. If you have to give a public speech, for example, and you worry you’ll have a panic attack, it can be…

Imagine this scenario: Two people are having a conversation. One says to the other: “I’m against racism personally, but I just think that it’s a serious moral question and people should be given the choice to discriminate on grounds of race if they wish. After all, we can trust people.” Could anybody confronted by logic…

The Vatican foreign minister’s lecture raised as many questions as it provided answers writes Martin O’Brien   It was a considerable coup for the organisers to secure as distinguished and high-powered a figure as the Vatican’s foreign minister to deliver the Cardinal Cahal B. Daly Centenary Memorial lecture in Queen’s University, Belfast at the weekend.…

Integrity was the cornerstone of Liam Cosgrave’s life, writes Msgr John Wilson   iam Cosgrave’s wife Vera died on September 16, 2016 and was buried from this Church. Now just over one year later we gather once more this time for Liam’s funeral and for his last journey to and from this Church where he…

Today’s Fine Gael would have no place for its 1970s Taoiseach, writes David Quinn   Liam Cosgrave is the first Taoiseach I can remember. My father, a newspaper man like his father before him and his son now, was thrilled. My father was Fine Gael through and through and Cosgrave’s was the first Fine Gael-led…

Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: in our secularised world today our language is becoming ever-more empirical, one-dimensional and devoid of depth and this is closing our minds by stripping us of the deeper meanings inside our own experience.…

Editor’s Comment The number of people coming forward to discern a vocation to the priesthood and religious life in Ireland is stubbornly low. There is some evidence that when vocation-promotion is prioritised, interest increases. A few years ago, after the Church hosted a ‘Year of Vocations’, Irish dioceses saw the largest number of ordinations in…

Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford and Lismore has made a graceful apology for his remarks criticising the HPV vaccine. His overall points had been that the vaccine against cervical cancer might not be completely safe: and it might also have the effect of encouraging promiscuity among young girls. He has subsequently called his remarks “an…