The first Irishman to make pilgrimage to Bethlehem was St Cathal in the seventh century and, though the Church of the Nativity has not substantially changed since then, tourists and pilgrims are now rarer than white blackbirds. When I recently visited the church where Jesus was born for three days in a row, the only…
Rumour has it that young people are returning to the Church. Whether this claim is true is open to debate, but one thing remains clear: spirituality has by no means disappeared. People worldwide still desire to live a life with a power greater than themselves, however, its meaning has migrated from following a religion to…
Some musicians such as Bono (and Roy Orbison in the past) are never seen without sunglasses and have popularised wearing them. While from a medical point of view this popularising is great for eyecare, it may seem sunglasses are a fashion item and not an absolute necessity for the good of one’s eyes. It is…
The recent Dáil vote to advance the Sinn Féin Bill to eliminate the three-day wait between the first contact and follow up for proceeding to procure a miscarriage (an abortion) has once again catapulted this issue into the mainstream of political discussion. Sinn Féin has long considered this a matter of political expediency; one to…
Faith, spirituality and climate leadership at a critical moment When Laudato Si’ Movement participated in the recent Austrian World Summit in Vienna, it was more than another stop on the global climate calendar. It was a powerful sign of something deeper taking place: faith, spirituality and moral values are moving closer to the centre of…
Everywhere you go in the Philippines, especially in schools and town halls, there is likely to be a statue of Dr José Rizal, the country’s national hero. He strongly opposed Spain’s oppressive colonial rule in his time. He believed that the true nature of a good government is a moral, transparent and merit-based one that…
Two ordinations, in July 2016 and June 2017, to which I, with my wife, was very kindly invited, put hitherto wholly unknown places in the suburbs of Cork on the map for me: St Joseph’s Church, Little Island, and Holy Cross Church, Mahon. Memorable, out-of-the-ordinary weekends both ceremonies were. Then, vowing to return some day…
You’ll have noticed that there’s a current fascination with the ancient world, exemplified by Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie of The Odyssey, and the likes of Prof. Mary Beard constantly extolling the glories of Imperial Rome. Dominance Books tracing the dominance of pre-Christian Greece and Rome, and their influence on our civilisation flow regularly off the…
Then Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by Peter Benenson, a Catholic lawyer, it had a very specific and narrow purpose, and that was to identify and champion prisoners of conscience who were being kept behind bars for their political or other beliefs, almost always by authoritarian regimes. The danger was that these prisoners would…
The sickening spectacle that is George Gibney, the former swimming coach who was in the news again when he was convicted of sexually abusing five young girls – he was originally charged with 79 counts of indecent assault. The takeaways are what they have always been, stay vigilant and watchful over kids. Even Jesus warned…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn