I’m in Rome this week attending the unprecedented meeting on the protection of minors within the Church. Primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Eamon – as president of the Irish bishops’ conference – is here sharing the experiences of the Church in Ireland with his brother bishops. Even before the summit got underway this morning (Thursday) people…

As If she didn’t have enough to concern her in her own job, Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan launched a broadside against the Catholic Church this week. Speaking at an event in Dublin, Ms Madigan referred to what she described as “catastrophic moral failures”. Ms Madigan went on to express the view that Catholics need…

“A punch in the stomach followed by a kick in the teeth” – that’s how a priest described his reaction to the death of Fr John Cummins. A priest of the Kildare and Leighlin Diocese, 52-year-old Fr John died in an accident last week. Speaking at the requiem Mass for Fr John, Bishop Denis Nulty recalled…

One of the great sorrows of many Irish parishes is the pain felt by parents and grandparents when family members no longer go to Mass. Whenever I speak at parish events or novenas, I see the acute pain as people tell me about how they did their best to bring their children up in the…

It is not now an infrequent occurrence to meet someone who will observe of contemporary Ireland that “it’s not the country I grew up in”. Some will go further and say “it doesn’t feel like home anymore”. At a basic level, the world and society are always changing. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544BC…

The idea of ethos can sometimes be a thorny issue. In a world which often prides a utilitarian approach to education over a holistic vision of the human person, ethos can get reduced to 15 or 20 minutes of religious education every now and then. When one speaks of ethos to politicians, they will often…

In just two months’ time, Pope Francis will mark six years on the Throne of St Peter. For many, Cardinal Bergoglio came from nowhere. The Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires was little known amongst Catholics, though he had made a deep and abiding impression on the College of Cardinals. Remember when Benedict XVI announced that…

In her famous annus horribilis speech in 1992, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II described the fading year as one which “is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure”. Queen Elizabeth was reflecting on the fact that 1992 had seen her son the Duke of York separate from his wife, the Princess…

Have you ever wondered what it was like for Mary and Joseph to make the journey to Bethlehem? Or, for Jesus and his disciples to make the trip from the Galilee to Jerusalem? From the earliest times, Christians from all over the world have gone to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of…

Even in a country like Ireland where the story of the Nativity is well known, the humble narrative of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem still has the power to captivate the imagination. All but the most jaded and cynical of post-Catholics surely cannot find themselves unmoved at the thought of the Virgin Mary hearing the message…