St John writes that before he was arrested Jesus, speaking to his disciples, told them: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus then went on to lay down his life…

Each year, I have the privilege of teaching cohorts of Catholic student teachers about liturgy and the liturgical year. It is a part of my work I value deeply, not only because of the content itself, but because of what it reveals about the changing landscape of faith among young adults. Twenty-five years ago, many…

We used to call them ‘holy pictures’ back in the long-ago days of my convent education – cheap little copies of paintings by Raphael and Botticelli, on which we schoolgirls would write messages to each other on the obverse side. And now I realise how influential these images were in illuminating the epic events of…

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is the official State body responsible for collecting and publishing statistics about the country. The CSO must count things carefully as it runs the census, produces data on population, employment, health, crime, education and the economy, sets standards for how data is defined and collected, and supplies the data used…

What would you do to protect a child from harm? For most people, the answer is simple: anything, at least anything lawful. It is therefore unsurprising that when asked whether they would support banning under-16s from accessing social media, 76% of respondents in a recent Irish Times survey said yes. The instinct is understandable. However,…

We are simultaneously overfamiliar with Christianity and not familiar with it at all. We look at the ‘strangeness’ of the Christian story, yet we are rarely struck by it as we should be. We are taught that 2,000 years ago God became fully man, while remaining fully God and was born to a woman in…

Before Jesus left for the Mount of Olives to sweat his own blood at Gethsemane, scripture records that the Lord and his disciples sang a hymn – a line easily overlooked in the mysteries of Holy Week. This song, possibly Psalm 118, was something that struck musician and composer Patrick Davey – who was possibly…

Last month, I travelled around Vancouver Island, my island home, which is the size of Ireland. Its population was 864,864 in the latest census; just 96,000 of these are Catholic, fewer than 10%. Twenty priests staff this large mission territory, with two of its 30 parishes served by (lay) pastoral administrators. I was particularly interested…

Few would dispute Micheál Martin’s mastery of the bedside manner or his ability to project calm authority as leader of the country. Whether navigating meetings at the White House with President Trump or managing the daily challenges of politics at home, his instinctive grasp of political craft has served him well during his 15 years…