Fr Joe McVeigh He did more than most to take the gun out of Irish politics, writes Fr Joe McVeigh Martin McGuinness will be forever remembered for his key role in building the peace after almost 30 years of violent conflict, when many had almost despaired of ever finding a peaceful way forward. He will…

Martin McGuinness – the man I navigated the road to the peace process with Martin McGuinness was a tough paramilitary leader who became a statesman. It required a lot of intelligence, courage, skill and tenacity to recognise around 1990 that armed struggle, and even the twin armalite and ballot box strategy, had reached a dead…

A fitting legacy for Martin McGuinness would be a redoubling of efforts on all sides to find solutions to “our current problems” according to the Primate of All Ireland. Archbishop Eamon Martin paid tribute to Mr McGuinness as “someone who chose personally to leave behind the path of violence and to walk instead along the…

Greg Daly explores the historical roots of the mentality that created Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home History and commemoration are, as President Higgins observed in a speech in Dublin’s Mansion House almost exactly a year ago, different things. Commemoration, he noted, is typically mediated through present-day concerns, and stands always in danger of being exploited…

What is meant when certain schools of psychology today warn us about our ‘shadow’? What’s our ‘shadow’? In essence, it’s this: we have within us powerful, fiery energies that, for multiple reasons, we cannot consciously face and so we handle them by denial and repression so as to not have to deal with them. Metaphorically…

What would Ireland be without St Patrick? asks Mary Kenny What would Ireland be without St Patrick? Before Christianity, the classical world knew almost nothing of Hibernia. According to Philip Freeman, visiting divinity scholar at Harvard, “the few references to Ireland in classical sources are largely complaints that the island was a land of savages…

Many Irish Christians will have felt sadness and sympathy when Cardinal Desmond Connell died last month. While secure in his convictions, he was faced as Archbishop of Dublin with mounting difficulties, to which past practices provided few answers. He bore his office with courtesy and dignity, and tried to carry out his responsibilities to the…

The good the orders did must be offset against the harm, writes David Quinn The legacy of Ireland’s institutions continues to haunt us, whether they be industrial schools, mother and baby homes, or Magdalene homes. Can the mental hospitals be far behind? Women considered ‘fallen’ ended up in institutions, so did their babies. Children guilty…

Everything is gift. That’s a principle that ultimately undergirds all spirituality, all morality, and every commandment. Everything is gift. Nothing can be ultimately claimed as our own. Genuine moral and religious sensitivity should make us aware of that. Nothing comes to us by right. This isn’t something we automatically know. During a class some years…

Fr Conor McDonough OP As part of their 2017 celebrations, Dublin’s St Patrick’s Day Festival commissioned a poem, ‘My Ireland’, by Stephen James Smith, available now on YouTube. It’s a kaleidoscope of incongruous impressions of contemporary Ireland and its various mythologies, with some very moving parts and powerfully complemented by the accompanying music and images.…