Category: Comment & Analysis

Of winning and losing

Our society tends to divide us up into winners and losers. Sadly, we don’t often reflect on how this affects our relationships with each other, nor on what it means for us as Christians. What does it mean? In essence, that our relationships with each other tend are too-charged with competition and jealousy because we…

Shining a light on ordinary parish life

Bro. Conor McDonough Picture the scene: a mid-20th-Century crowd of Irish emigrants in a newsagent’s after Mass. They all rush to buy the ‘Irish papers’ to find out what the important people in Dublin are doing and how the metropolis views the provinces. Then in walks a Monaghan eccentric. He has notions, so maybe he’s…

A dangerous stand-off between Church and State

Long before he assumed the highest office in the United States, President Donald Trump’s contradictory statements on everything from the war in Iraq to abortion were subjected to quizzically raised brows and prime-time debates. None of which has done the billionaire businessman any harm as he harangues and denounces anyone brazen enough to try and…

Islamic State’s new front in Egypt

Gamal Tawfiq, a Coptic Christian schoolteacher, was walking home from work when his killers struck on February 16. Having been stalked through the streets of el Arish, the largest city on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Tawfiq was shot from a passing motorcycle, on which the killers then made their hasty escape. The death of Tawfiq was…

It’s time for Richard Bruton to acknowledge the important role of faith schools in society

In respect of denominational schools, Education Minister, Richard Bruton is following in the path of his two immediate Labour predecessors, Jan O’Sullivan and Ruairi Quinn. That is to say, he is investigating ways of reducing the influence of the Churches over our education system, especially at primary school level. That influence, it should be said…