“Keep the Poet” was a mantra used by some of Michael D. Higgins’ followers in the course of the presidential election. And the country has indeed kept the bard, although not without challenges (which is as it should be). And now that he is elected the steward of the nation for the next seven years,…

If you were a Christian Democrat, how would you have voted in the recent presidential election? To begin with, you might have looked beyond the candidates on offer and looked to the wider political picture. You might have asked yourself, is there some way to register a protest against the way in which the country…

If you are fed up of seeing advertisements for mince pies and other Christmas items in budget German supermarket chains since September, I have a suggestion. Take a stand against commercialism and start planning your Bright Friday event now for November 23. Bright Friday is the brainchild of Martina Lehane Sheehan. She dreamt it up…

I recently had a weird dream. Basically it went like this. Donald Trump changed his mind and at short notice decided he would visit Ireland on his way back from the World War I celebrations in Paris. The Government was all over the place trying to put all the arrangements in place. It was decided…

I do not want to die from some medical condition; I want to die from death! Ivan Illich wrote that. What’s meant here? Don’t we all die from death? Of course, in reality that’s what we all die from, but in our idea of things, most often, we die from a medical condition or from…

Gabriel Doherty November 1918 is now, of course, best remembered for the signing of the Armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War. As the month broke, however, The Irish Catholic was more immediately concerned with the threat of death from another enemy, with whom no negotiated peace was possible. Fatalities from the…

Gabriel Doherty The pages of The Irish Catholic for Saturday, October 26, 1918, contained an eclectic assortment of items. No one topic dominated, in comparison to the recent extensive coverage of the sinking of the Leinster, but two themes were common to nearly all stories: the growing belief that the end of the war was…

Dr Kevin Myers Hallowe’en is on the horizon and with it we find many of our friends and neighbours preparing to meet the macabre. In this mist of the seasonal jovial ghoul, however, we also take time to reflect on our lives and, rather importantly remember our dead. In many ways, Christianly is a religious…

Cindy Wooden Having some doubts is definitely better than having no doubts at all, Pope Francis told a group of seminarians. As the Synod of Bishops on ‘young people, the faith and vocational discernment’ was continuing at the Vatican, the Pope tackled some of the synod’s key questions when he met on October 13 with…