Fr Paul Murphy, the army chaplain stabbed multiple times on his way into Renmore army barracks in Galway last Thursday night, was very fortunate to escape with his life, and it seems, without any long-term, life-altering incidents. The alleged assailant was a 16-year-old who cannot be named because of his age. Gardai have established that…
Three decades on from the IRA ceasefire, it’s right to recall the role played by prominent priests writes Michael Kelly It would become an iconic image of the terrible civil conflict on our island we euphemistically call ‘the Troubles’. Redemptorist Fr Alec Reid kneeling reciting the last rites for two British soldiers who had just…
A Dubliner, who liked a jar, was courting a Belfast woman in the eighties and was delighted when she invited him and his friends to Clonard. It was Sunday, and having enjoyed themselves the night before, they rushed to get ready – only to find that Clonard was not a local pub, but a monastery.…
Letter from Rome Jonah McKeown After the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAFL) last month issued a booklet summarising the Church’s teaching on a number of bioethical issues, the section on “artificial nutrition and hydration” (ANH) has some observers concerned about what they see as a departure from previous Church teaching. The Pontifical Academy for Life…
Part 1 of a new series on Faith in modern Ireland with Eoin McCormack Have you ever found yourself in the often-awkward position at work or in other social settings where you are elected as the spokesperson for all things Catholic? As society continues to diverge from the Church, if you’re a practicing Catholic in…
“I believe in evolution. I’m an atheist” was the declaration of one man on meeting him recently. But is it a case of ‘either/or’ or ‘both/and’? Is it possible to accept the theory of evolution and still believe in a Creator God? ‘Both/And’, Not ‘Either/Or’ The ‘either/or’ choice of evolution or Biblical faith is based…
Tis supposed to be the year of St Brigid. But with six months to go to the 1500th anniversary of her death, I was thinking there was a dearth of celebrations when a text came through about Brigid 1500. To mark the year, Dana has just written and recorded a new song for St Brigid.…
What does it mean to be Irish today? In the increasingly multi-ethnic nation that Ireland now is, that’s a question that will be pondered over. Olympic athletes like Rhasidat Adeleke and Daniel Wiffen demonstrated that a person representing Ireland may now have come from backgrounds not traditionally rooted in Ireland. (Wiffen’s family were from Yorkshire,…
It was with a mixture of disbelief and shock that the news of the untimely death of Archbishop Noël Treanor emerged on Sunday morning as Mass goers gathered to celebrate the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. From his native ‘stoney grey soil of Monaghan’ to the sprawling housing developments of his adopted home in Belfast,…
I recently caught up with some back issues of The Irish Catholic and I was struck by a comment from Senator Ronan Mullen in his View from the Seanad on June 27th. In attempting to discern a Christian way to protest, he finds that ‘People have been too passive to date of the anti-culture that…
David Quinn
Michael Kelly
Martina Purdy
Mary Kenny