Every now and then watching a programme on TV you might regret your initial reaction. Watching Panorama: Scandal in the Church of England, on BBC last week (BBC1 Monday, BBC2 Friday) I couldn’t help feeling a little relieved that for a change it wasn’t the Catholic Church under the microscope, or under the cosh. Unworthy…

Priests often have a prophetic role in the Church and society, and nowhere was this more evident than in the words of Fr Martin McGill at the funeral last week of Lyra McKee, tragically shot dead in Derry. Fr McGill’s words to the politicians assembled at her funeral (“Why in God’s name does it take…

You’d expect religious matters to figure more prominently in the media in Holy Week, and so they did, but I never reckoned on a major fire in Notre Dame Cathedral and the massacre at churches in Sri Lanka. It was blanket coverage of Notre Dame on the Monday night and through Tuesday, but as interest…

Sometimes when you hear about an upcoming programme, it’s so predictable you could nearly write the script in advance. That was largely the case with Rome vs The Republic on RTÉ1 last Thursday. In this documentary on relations between the Vatican and the Irish State we got the usual litany – Mother and Child Scheme,…

One of the least endearing aspects of modern media culture is the cult of celebrities. Make ‘em dance, drop them on remote islands, pop them into quiz shows. It’s not the worst idea to send them on a pilgrimage. And so it was with Pilgrimage: Road to Rome (BBC 2) a new series that started…

After last week’s review of the excellent programme on Fr Peyton, I’m in positive mode again. Last week BBC 2 Northern Ireland started a fine new series Oilithreacht (Pilgrimage), under the ‘BBC Gaeilge’ banner. Monday night’s episode was a warm treatment of the Lough Derg pilgrimage. It was promising that the focus was mainly on…

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 (15A)   It’s often said that modern bank robbers don’t go into buildings with their guns blazing anymore. No, they stand behind the counter in sharp suits clicking keys. In other words, they’re the banks themselves. We all know how badly they behaved when they were throwing 100% mortgages at people during Ireland’s boom years.…

Every now and then a programme comes along that you’d like to shower with awards. And so it is with the provocatively (and inaccurately!) titled Guns and Rosaries (RTÉ1, Thursday) – definitely my top religious programme of the year so far. It was a fascinating documentary on the life of Fr Patrick Peyton, known as…

One of the biggest media stories of the week was the massacre at the mosques in New Zealand, and among the hours of coverage I heard a few items that hit the right tone. I was impressed by the host’s interview with New Zealand’s ambassador on Saturday with Cormac Ó hEadhra (RTÉ Radio 1) last…

The onset of Lent usually prompts some extra interest in religion in the media, however short lived. Ivan Yates had a fairly positive coverage of Ash Wednesday, on his show The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk). He said he had seen lots of people with ashes on their foreheads in Dublin during the day, though roving reporter…