Category: Opinion

Doing Advent right

It’s the time of the Feast of Christ the King, which marks my annual one-woman Advent restoration campaign. In CS Lewis’ book,  The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the reign of the White Witch in Narnia means that it is always winter and never Christmas. In our culture, we suffer from a similar problem, except…

A faith worth living for

Two bishops stood on Co. Down hillside, facing each other, both draped in blood red, the colour of the martyr. It was a poignant scene at the weekend, as the Bishop of Down and Connor pondered the stone monument of St Patrick, which was illuminated in red, as the sun went down at Saul, the…

A dire warning from Canada for us all

In case you hadn’t noticed, there are serious moves being made in the House of Commons to allow assisted suicide. Where Britain goes, we usually follow in due course. The bill to permit assisted suicide is not being sponsored by the new Labour Government, but by a member of the Labour party and there will…

A terrible event recalled..

Years ago, I had a certain amount of sympathy for Provisional Sinn Féin/IRA. I even defended some of their tactics on the – now I think stupid and wicked – revolutionary principle that “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”. I felt the Catholic nationalist people of Northern Ireland had suffered long injustices: maybe…

The new evangelisation

An Irish stonemason, with little education, became one of the great evangelists of the last century. And his story is now entwined with the famous American bishop Robert Barron, himself the son of Irish emigrants, whose Word on Fire network has gone global. I heard the story at St Comgall’s School on the Falls Road…

Will Ireland follow the US’ back to basics approach?

As the politicians of Ireland take to the streets in preparation for the forthcoming election, the fallout and post-election analysis from the US continues. A resounding victory for President Elect Donald Trump, and ignominious defeat for current Vice President Kamala Harris, have made for pages and pages of political post-mortems. While there are major differences…