Everything is gift. That’s a principle that ultimately undergirds all spirituality, all morality, and every commandment. Everything is gift. Nothing can be ultimately claimed as our own. Genuine moral and religious sensitivity should make us aware of that. Nothing comes to us by right. This isn’t something we automatically know. During a class some years…
Fr Conor McDonough OP As part of their 2017 celebrations, Dublin’s St Patrick’s Day Festival commissioned a poem, ‘My Ireland’, by Stephen James Smith, available now on YouTube. It’s a kaleidoscope of incongruous impressions of contemporary Ireland and its various mythologies, with some very moving parts and powerfully complemented by the accompanying music and images.…
Bishop Eamonn Casey “…was greatly loved by the priests and people of the dioceses of both Kerry and Galway”, writes Michael Kelly It’s hard to get across to younger generations today the enormity of the scandal that was the revelation in 1992 that Bishop Eamonn Casey had secretly fathered a child years earlier. One got…
What would Ireland be without St Patrick? asks Mary Kenny What would Ireland be without St Patrick? Before Christianity, the classical world knew almost nothing of Hibernia. According to Philip Freeman, visiting divinity scholar at Harvard, “the few references to Ireland in classical sources are largely complaints that the island was a land of savages…
Many Irish Christians will have felt sadness and sympathy when Cardinal Desmond Connell died last month. While secure in his convictions, he was faced as Archbishop of Dublin with mounting difficulties, to which past practices provided few answers. He bore his office with courtesy and dignity, and tried to carry out his responsibilities to the…
“The Church will still continue to work and pray for a flourishing of vocations to the priesthood”, writes Michael Kelly “The last person out should switch off the lights.” That’s Donegal-based priest Fr Edward Gallagher’s stark reaction to revelations this week that dozens of rural post offices are set to close. Fr Gallagher, parish priest…
“This inflated language is a signal of the anger. Our families did not commit ‘genocide’: they did, however, contribute to the social mores which produced Tuam and its ilk”, writes Mary Kenny It’s understandable – and right – that most people are deeply distressed and desperately upset about the uncovering of the Tuam babies’ remains.…
The votes have been counted and Northern Ireland is in something of a state of shock. Last week unionists had a 16-seat majority over nationalists in the Assembly. Now, just over a week later nationalism has a total of 39 seats to unionism’s 40 seats. However the DUP, by a majority of one, has more…
It’s all over bar the shouting, so the saying goes. As the Citizens’ Assembly moved last weekend from a session of presentations and questioning to a phase of internal debate towards a final ballot on recommendations to be put to the Oireachtas, it is a fairly safe bet that we have not heard the last…
Investigation of mother and baby homes should proceed apace, writes David Quinn It is very hard, three years after the story first broke, to write again about the Tuam mother and baby home and all the deaths that took place there in the years of its operation from 1925 to 1961. What else is left…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Dr Martin Mansergh
Nuala O’Loan
Paul Keenan
David Quinn