Notebook Fr Bernard Healy   At the start of November this year, various Facebook friends began posting images and messages stating that with Hallowe’en behind us, now was the time for Christmas songs and decorations. Christmas seems to start earlier each year, but the current fad seems to be for the Christmas Season to encompass…

It is said, amongst teachers, that by teaching, you learn. Similarly, by writing for readers, a journalist learns much from those readers. And over the past week, I received a reader’s letter which gave me much pause for thought. It was from “Anne” in the “West of Ireland”. “I am writing to you re the…

The View Martin Mansergh   November is the month of remembrance, with All Saints’ Day on the 1st, followed by All Souls’ Day on the 2nd, in the Christian calendar. It is also the month when on 11 November 1918 an Armistice was called which brought the main fighting in the First World War to…

Living well is a lifelong process, but we have to know what we are aiming at, writes David Quinn   In an excellent address to a conference on priestly formation in Maynooth at the weekend, Archbishop Eamon Martin made a passing reference to the volumes of work that have been written in the years after…

There’s a growing body of literature today that chronicles the experience of persons who were clinically dead for a period of time (minutes or hours) and were medically resuscitated and brought back to life. Many of us, for example, are familiar with Dr Eben Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.…

Notebook   July 2009 saw the commissioning of HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer and the most technologically advanced ship the Royal Navy had ever deployed. Capable of travelling nearly twice as far and almost half as efficient again as the ship it was replacing, it had stealth technology and a huge radar which could…

Anthony de Mello is known as a pioneer in his style of prayer teaching, writes Chai Brady   Harvesting Hope with Anthony De Mello by John Callanan SJ is available from Columba Press. Contact 016874096 or visit http://www.columba.ie/

If I were interviewing a candidate for private secretary, I would certainly ask her – or him – whether they were married, and if they had a family. It is a perfectly sensible question, and – in the public realm – it is a matter for the record. All census forms, and all books of…

Battering the beleaguered bishops is neither going to spur them into effective action nor is it going to hasten reconciliation, writes Dom Mark Patrick Hederman   In 2008 I was elected Abbot of Glenstal Abbey. This vote could not be ratified in Rome, however, unless I, who had been a brother monk for almost 50…

The View Marian Finucane interviewed Katie Ascough on her Saturday radio programme last weekend. The discussion focused on Ascough’s recent impeachment as president of the UCD Students’ Union. The central issue in that impeachment was the fact that Ascough withdrew from circulation a booklet for first year students. She did so having been advised by…