A former Labour MP, in Britain, Ann Keen, certainly achieved a personal and political goal this past year of 2021. She succeeded in getting the Westminster government to announce an inquiry into forced adoptions in Britain between the 1950s and the 1970s. Mrs Keen, former parliamentary secretary to Gordon Brown, has also called for an official…
‘Negaholism’ is a term that is used to describe the state or condition of being addicted to negative thinking. Counsellors and therapists more-and-more see it as a psychological addiction that has an impact on a person’s overall quality of life. Of course, it’s important to distinguish between negaholism and deep-seated clinical depression which is a…
My father always had a merry soul. He still does. And he also had a remarkably prodigious memory. There wasn’t a traditional or seannós song he didn’t know. It was as if on the first hearing of a song he soaked up and absorbed not just every line, but every nuance, ornamentation, and flourish, of…
I’m not a literary critic, nor pretend to be. Simple fact, I don’t read enough. A busy, pressured life affords me only some smaller windows of time within which to read anything that’s not directly related to my ministry. Nonetheless, I try to be faithful to a discipline I set for myself years ago, namely,…
The Notebook Every year at this time I find myself returning to a beautiful reflection by Joyce Rupp titled ‘Welcoming the New Year’: “A new year stands on my doorstep ready to enter my life’s journey. Something in me welcomes this visitor: the hope of bountiful blessings the joy of a new beginning the freshness…
Yes, for some people it looks as though it might be an austere, even a lonely and isolating Christmas. I’m not a fan of some of these State-imposed restrictions occasioned by what seems to me an over-interpretation of health measures; but, as realists say nowadays, it is what it is. And you can never beat…
The View When I was a little girl, all the best stories began with “Once upon a time…” It was a magical opening because I always wondered, “Where is this book taking me? When is it happening?” In the days before television (I am very old!) books were the medium through which I was transported…
The Christmas story is surely one of the greatest stories ever told. It chronicles a birth from which the world records time as before or after. Moreover, it is written in a way that has inflamed the romantic imagination for 2,000 years. This hasn’t always been for the good. Beyond spawning every kind of legend…
Letter from Rome: The Pope’s answer on Paris prelate raised more questions than it answered John L. Allen Jr As the wise saying goes, “If you don’t want the answer, then don’t ask the question.” That adage doesn’t cover every situation, however, because there are also times you genuinely do want the answer, and still…
Junno Arocho Esteves Adam Piekarski, a homeless man from Lódz, Poland, never imagined that the sketches he would draw in his free time while waiting for the public showers near Bernini’s Colonnade would lead to the opportunity of a lifetime. In November, the Vatican Philatelic and Numismatic Office announced that its 2021 set of commemorative…
Mary Kenny
Michael Kelly
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Nuala O’Loan
John L. Allen Jr.