It hasn’t been a great week for ‘Team Ireland’, as successive governments have dubbed Ireland’s overseas diplomatic and trade efforts. Last week I observed in this column that “modern Ireland, for all the opportunities and good things, is also a sad, frightened, angry and unhappy place. “Naming this truth is the first step to healing…
Have you ever had an experience of being gaslit? Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person (or institution) causes someone to question their sanity, memories, or perception of reality. People who experience gaslighting may feel confused, anxious, or unable to trust themselves. Over the past couple of years, I have become increasingly…
Christians in the land of Jesus are living yet another episode in the drama that is their long Good Friday. In recent decades, the Holy Land has haemorrhaged its Christian population to such an extent that people are now talking about the very real and tragic prospect of a Holy Land without a living and…
I must admit, I was a very infrequent Mass-goer (if that is the word) for a couple of years. When the Covid-19 pandemic started and Mass ‘went online’, I tried for a week or two, but I soon discovered that sitting at my kitchen table in front of a laptop ‘virtually’ attending Mass and ‘virtually’…
“We had hoped, but…” is what Cleopas told the hidden Lord on the road to Emmaus about the experience of desolation in the early Church following the Crucifixion.
The general consensus here at the Synod of Bishops in Rome is that it’s good to talk. Some people are even learning that it can also be good to listen. The beauty of the papacy as we now understand it in the Church is the ability to transform ecclesiastical culture and even ecclesiastical speak, and…
Thankfully all 52 of our Holy Land pilgrims are safe and well after the unprecedented situation of finding ourselves in Israel when war broke out with the militant faction Hamas. The group of pilgrims arrived back in Dublin Airport on Thursday evening on a direct El Al flight from Tel Aviv, but the flight was…
There is a dialogue in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring which has been running around my mind during my time in Jerusalem:
The number of people coming forward to discern a vocation to the priesthood and religious life in Ireland is showing some signs of steadying
“Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings, they’re your best link to your past. And the people most likely to stick with you in the future”. So wrote essayist Mary Schmich. I buried my mother at the age of 65 four years ago…
Michael Kelly