‘F’ words are high on my agenda at the moment. With an opening like that I suppose there is a chance you will read further. In recent weeks I have been stopped in my tracks by two heart-breaking personal situations. Firstly, a young couple whose wedding I participated in last year had the joy of…

I’m very fond of my own little parable about the Dublin trams. It’s highly symbolic about social change – and social renewal. In 1949, the last of the Dublin trams were abolished, as all progressive-minded folk affirmed that “the future belongs to the motor car”. A few, lonely protesters tried to save the Dublin trams,…

Alcohol sales are restricted in Ireland in all sorts of ways. For example, an off-licence cannot sell alcohol before 10.30am from Monday to Saturday, or before 12.30pm on a Sunday, and never after 10pm. Pubs must close after a certain hour. ‘Happy Hour’ – selling alcohol at a reduced price during a certain time of…

Several years ago Hollywood made a movie, City of Angels, about an angel named Seth whose job it was to accompany the spirits of the recently deceased to the afterlife. On one such mission, waiting in a hospital, he fell in love with a brilliant young woman surgeon. As an angel, Seth has never experienced…

Fr Vincent Sherlock The Redemptorist Fr Peter Burns directed our priests’ diocesan retreat this year. In some of his talks he spoke to us of Faith and the absolute need for it to be personal. He drew the vital distinction that though it need be ‘personal’, if truly lived it can never be private. By its…

The Government does not know the cause of death of the majority of the asylum seekers who have died in State care in the last 10 years. While two people are recorded as dying as a result of suicide and one resident was stabbed to death, the “suspected cause of death” of over one third…

Joy is an infallible indication of God’s presence, just as the cross is an infallible indication of Christian discipleship. What a paradox! And Jesus is to blame. When we look at the Gospels we see that Jesus shocked his contemporaries in seemingly opposite ways. On the one hand, they saw in him a capacity to…

What do the Sistine Chapel, a used car with 186,000 miles on the odometer and a statue of Our Lady of Lujan made out of metal from an abandoned factory have in common? Besides being found in the Vatican Museums’ collections, the 1984 Renault, the Renaissance frescoes and the recycled scrap all help showcase Pope…

In an address of unrelenting irony to the Diocese of Würzburg, Germany on July 8, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin spoke in honour of a great missionary monk, St Killian, “…who brought renewal in the Faith from Ireland right across Europe”. He speaks as the second most senior figure of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a country…

You only have to walk around the centre of Dublin to see that it is a city on the edge of booming future revolution. The cranes are flying – up everywhere. The buildings in the centre of town are being renovated and restored, and the hotels are full – not just of tourists, but of…