I am reminded of the somewhat cynical remark made by someone a few years ago when he said “it’s well for those who can afford to say their prayers abroad”. It was a comment on the many thousands of Irish people who every year travel to places of pilgrimage like Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, Rome, the…

It’s crisis-time for students, and it’s especially crisis-time for students seeking accommodation. The situation, particularly in Dublin, is dire. We know it’s dire for homeless families as well, although the needs of students, and of families, are different. The solution for families is for more family homes to be built, pronto. The solution – or…

Ronan McGreevy Fr Willie Doyle SJ died as he had lived: fearlessly in the service of others. He ventured into no man’s land to give extreme unction to two officers lying wounded in a shell hole. Another German shell landed among them. Their bodies were never recovered from the battlefield. Fr Doyle was one of…

Extremist politics is on the rise on both left and right in Europe and America. We have just witnessed a far-right rally take place in Charlottesville, Virginia, with members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis taking part. They clashed violently with members of Antifa, a far-left group. One of the far-right demonstrators ploughed his…

I don’t always find it easy to pray. Often I’m over-tired, distracted, caught-up in tasks, pressured by work, short on time, lacking the appetite for prayer, or more strongly drawn to do something else. But I do pray daily; despite the fact that I often don’t want to and despite the fact that many times…

We’re in something of a Catch-22 situation here. If you draw attention to sacrilege you might end up playing into the hands of the sacrilegious. They’re looking for attention. If you pay no attention to it at all, you could give the impression that you don’t really care when the sacred objects of your religion…

The purpose of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018 is to fully present the teaching of Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation on love in the family, of Pope Francis. In the midst of certain controversies since its publication in April 2016, it is often forgotten that it was written after, and…

Carlos X. Colorado Romero’s centennial coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparitions at Fatima, and it is useful to take Fatima as a guidepost to situate Romero’s life in the life of the Church. Indeed, the major thematic set points in the Fatima message – the World’s wars and the Church’s sufferings in…

The word “Protestant” is generally misunderstood. Martin Luther’s protest that led to the Protestant reformation was not, in fact, a protest against the Roman Catholic Church; properly understood, it was a protest for God. God, in Luther’s view, was being manipulated to serve human and ecclesial self-interest. His protest was a plea to respect God’s…

Fr Vincent Sherlock He pulled in to get petrol. The back seat of his car was filled with bits and pieces from his home – the bits, over and above, what the van had taken away earlier that day. The young petrol attendant, seeing the packed car said: “Are you the new man?” The priest, telling the…