There has been remarkably little serious discussion about how Irish schools are supposed to respond to the sudden rise in children identifying as transgender. This is not something teachers were trained for, and it is not an area in which teachers’ unions or school management bodies have any real expertise. Yet schools have been left…
When we were growing up, my mother always insisted that we didn’t discuss religion or politics at family gatherings. On asking her why, she would say that those subjects always ended up in a row. Of course, she had grown up in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, and politics had divided families and…
I was ‘today’ years old when I discovered what the trending hashtag #YOHO stands for. For those, like me, not fluent in the constantly evolving language of social media, #YOHO stands for awe and wonder — moments when something interrupts our momentum, catches our attention, and gently reminds us that life is deeper and richer…
Dr Mary McAleese’s Irish Times column recently argues [an argument that she has been making since at least 2018] that infant Baptism “denies babies their human rights” because it enrols them—without their consent—into lifelong Catholic membership with binding obligations and (in her view) a “no-exit policy.” She ridicules the language of “renewing baptismal promises” (since…
Here are some of the posts I’ve shared, or followed, on the social media platform ‘X’ over the last few days (at the time of writing). A wonderful ballet performance in the streets of Paris, accompanied by a pianist playing Tchaikovsky; a posting about Ireland being No. 1 among the “most educated countries” in the…
There is a great temptation to accept religious decline as inevitable. It does not help that much of the mainstream media seizes on any indication that faith is dying and amplifies it. For example, in 2022, the Central Statistics Office issued a press release stating that “more than 3.5 million people, or 69% of the…
I once laughed like the biblical Sarah after reading a letter from a Christian woman I had never met. She wrote to tell me about a vivid dream she had experienced, revealing that I would visit the Holy Land. At the time, I was living in a fairly strict convent in Belfast and saw no…
After the recent seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Muduro and his wife, Cilia, by US Special Forces from their supposedly secure hiding place, Donald Trump spoke in his own typically idiosyncratic way about international law. The bottom line? He doesn’t really believe in it. As soon as the capture happened, experts and political leaders rightly…
The Education Nation podcast launches on Monday, January 18 when the first episode drops to coincide with Catholic Schools week. We have lined up a host of fascinating guests who have intriguing stories to tell about their own career journeys and their role within the education system. As we hear their stories, we hope that…
Just before Christmas we were delighted to welcome Dr Eilis Humphreys into the offices of The Irish Catholic to record an interview for our new podcast, Education Nation. The first episode, which drops later this month, is a fascinating and personal insight into the career of one of the leading figures in Irish education over the last three decades. In the interview Eilis shares with us some of the foundations of her love of teaching and learning and her passion for all things education. Along the way she…
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
Martina Purdy
David Quinn