My aunt Mary Margaret will be 99 in November, please God. I visited her recently in her home in Richmond, Virginia. This has become an almost annual event as I spend some time in a parish on Long Island, New York each year. Whilst there, I do a little parish work but enjoy a fair…
Dear Editor, Every week The Irish Catholic supplies us with words of wisdom, but your September 15 issue surpassed itself when I found two paragraphs on Pages 34 and 35, which were worth the €2.50 price of the paper on their own. The first was written by Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap, and read: “Forget…
‘A pilgrimage’ – that was one of the most frequent descriptions of the vast queue, miles long, formed by the public filing past Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin before her funeral. And pilgrimage has another dimension that is both practical and symbolic” Pilgrimage is primarily religious in nature and its main purpose is to achieve holiness and…
The View The diocese of Kildare and Leighlin recently announced a timeline for the introduction of lay-led liturgies and the introduction of what is called a “sustainable Mass schedule” by the first Sunday in Lent in February 2023. It is far from the first Irish diocese to announce such measures. Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare…
Parts of the world we barely think about have an importance we in Ireland don’t appreciate writes David Quinn One of the Pope’s fiercest critics is Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, the vast landlocked central Asian country which Pope Francis visited last week. Bishop Schneider’s criticisms of the Pope are often…
“The cock will crow at the breaking of your own ego – there are lots of ways to wake up!” John Shea gave me those words and I understood them a little better recently as I stood in line at an airport: I had checked in for a flight, approached security, saw a huge line-up,…
As time goes by, parishes all over the country are continuing to realise the negative effects that Covid-19 had on their communities. Apart from the loss of those who died from the disease, the virus scattered people into greater isolation and broke the habit of Church attendance for many. As communities struggle to re-build after…
Editor’s Comment “If you ever wonder what the relevance of the Faith might be for people in modern Ireland try a death bed,” a priest once told me. He was speaking about one of the most profound aspects of his ministry – accompanying a departing soul on their final journey and comforting and consoling their…
Dear Editor, With all the hullabaloo surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s death, the energy crisis, war in Ukraine etc… the fact that we are living through a housing crisis seems to have slipped from the agenda. This is the issue that seems unsolvable, at least it seems that way due to a host of inept politicians and…
It’s cheering to see that Garth Brooks has, once again, had such a popular and rapturous reception in Ireland. Country and western music is a meaningful genre of ballad, lyric and narrative, reaching into human experience just as deeply as great opera. Its roots, moreover, are Irish, or at least partly Irish, the hillbilly notes…
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly