A healthy sense of guilt is actually a good thing but too much of it can be enormously harmful, writes Jason Osborne The sense of wrongdoing is demonised into oblivion today, and there are obvious reasons for that. Many say the Church focused excessively on eliciting guilt from its followers in decades and centuries past,…
Personal Profile Dr Dermot Kearney, past president of the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) UK, believes that we must always be prepared to invite people to talk about faith and spirituality. His Catholic faith has helped him deal with the challenges being a doctor presents and he wants to share that gift. Irish born but based…
Fasting has been a part of the religious spiritual arsenal for thousands of years and not for no reason, writes Jason Osborne Prayer, almsgiving and fasting are the three pillars upon which a successful Lenten campaign is built, but today we’re going to focus on fasting. The necessity of prayer and almsgiving/charity is evident for all…
Personal Profile Fr Declan Lohan, a priest of the Galway diocese, says that he didn’t appreciate Christ or the Church in the first part of his life. He developed this appreciation over time, first through the Legion of Mary and Youth 2000, and now through his work as a parish priest in Renmore, Co. Galway.…
The Irish Hospice Foundation is providing information and resources on supporting people through grief in the workplace, writes Jason Osborne Grief is a terrible thing. Writing more succinctly about it than I can, C.S. Lewis said that no one ever told him that it felt so much like fear: “I am not afraid, but the sensation…
Personal Profile Sr Stephanie O’Brien IBVM traces her vocation to her days as a schoolgirl in a Loreto school in Cavan. Two missionary sisters heading to India gave a talk to Sr Stephanie’s class, saying that they were going to “sacrifice their life to save the world”. “This little 12-year-old wanted to do the same,”…
The news cycle seems more doom and gloom than ever, and it’s important to figure out how to deal with it, writes Jason Osborne Lent seems timelier than ever this year. The great season of repentance and refocus comes as war erupts closer to home for us in Europe than it has in a long…
Personal Profile Michelle Ward’s faith wasn’t always as strong as it is now, but God has always spoken to her through the relationships in her life. Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, Mrs Ward says that she grew up with a mother who was very strong in her faith, and it was how this faith…
Willpower is a major fuel in the spiritual life, and it will come in handy during Lent, writes Jason Osborne Lent has begun, and our spiritual resolutions are hopefully made. As discussed last week in this column, Lent is the perfect opportunity to refocus on the goal of life: God. Unfortunately for us, however, it’s…
Personal Profile Fr John Harris OP was set on the path to the priesthood from the age of seven, and hasn’t looked back since. Elected last year as the provincial for the Dominicans in Ireland, he sees his task as being to encourage his brethren to preach the Gospel. “My vocation story is very boring,”…
Ruadhán Jones