The right to religious worship has now been restricted in Ireland in some shape or form for 405 days. Apart from a brief period during the summer and the month of December, public Mass in the Republic has been disallowed for over a year. Many good people – instinctively trusting that the Government knew what…

Admiration for members of the British royal family is not something that comes to me spontaneously. It would, of course, be hard not to have sympathy for Queen Elizabeth II given some of the embarrassment her adult children have caused her. The monarch has witnessed first-hand the consequences of marital infidelity and subsequent family breakdown.…

Talking to people in Catholic circles in Ireland in recent weeks there are mixed views about the plan of the Irish bishops’ to move towards a national synod of the Church. From my reading, the closer one is to active participation in the life of the Church, the more apprehensive one is about the potential…

The howls of derision from some quarters that met the recent note from the Vatican confirming that the Church does not bless same-sex unions should sound a warning bell for anyone looking naively at the idea of a national synod. The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in a short document approved by…

They say a picture paints a thousand words, and if that’s true the image of Pope Francis at the weekend standing in a bombed-out church in Iraq speaks more powerfully than any of the thousands of column inches that have been and will be written about the trip. As images go, it would be hard…

Early tomorrow morning (Friday), Pope Francis will depart from the Vatican for the 33rd apostolic journey of his pontificate outside of Italy. Iraq will be the 51st country that the Holy Father will have visited since the inauguration of his papacy eight years ago this month. It is a visit that the Pope has wanted…

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” is wisdom attributed to King Solomon in the Old Testament. It came to mind this week reflecting on the poor performance of the southern Government when it comes to charting a realistic and hopeful way out of the current level five Covid-19 restrictions. A succession of high-profile…

I asked a friend over the weekend – via a phonecall lest I be accused of flouting rules – if he was planning on giving up “the drink” this Lent as has been his custom for many years. “I think I’ll drink more,” was his joking response. It is a sentiment that will resonate with…

Just how toxic discussions about the Church and priests and religious have become in Ireland was evidenced a few years ago when novelist Marian Keyes suggested people throw stones if they see a priest. “No matter how ‘nice’ a priest is, no matter how many raffles he runs, he is still a foot soldier for…

There’s a terribly jarring advertisement on the radio at the moment. The trite catchphrase goes something like “this is us…staying at home…keeping away from one another…this is us”. It’s undoubtedly well-meaning and designed to affirm people in their persistence in observing pandemic-related restrictions. But, there is something desperately sad in it because this is actually…