My wife and I are like ships in the night –weary ships, that need a long spell in dry dock for repairs. We are incessantly commanded on strange, but urgent, midnight missions by capricious miniature admirals: babies, small children and viruses. From the deepest dream, each night I might awaken to find the bedroom door…
A Parent’s Perspective I’ve already seen the first pictures of snowdrops posted on Facebook and am beginning to notice the ‘grand stretch in the evenings’ and the first hopeful signs of spring. Of course, after last year’s experience we can’t rule out a late fall of snow and I’m sure a few wise people…
There are plenty of benefits to cannabis oil, but it’s not a miracle drug, writes Chai Brady The controversial cannabis plant is known to have many uses other than the illegal varieties, but sometimes it’s difficult to separate quackery from truth, especially with so many products purporting to be miracle cures. Many parents shudder…
Everything is of one piece. Whenever we don’t take that seriously, we pay a price. The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot…
Come the end of June I will have completed my fourth Leaving Cert – or at least that is how it feels. Our youngest, Diarmuid, is the one actually doing the exams but, as with his sisters before him, I feel like I am in there with him. Plus, he is also doing the HPAT…
Personal Profile University can be a challenging time for a young person, especially those who move out and are tasked with taking responsibility for practicing their faith without as much support or encouragement as they might have been used to from home. Being bombarded with so many ideologies and viewpoints, it can be tough…
Questions of Faith The Sacrament of Confession can seem not only a daunting practice for many Catholics but also a bizarre one – privately asking for forgiveness from God for your sins makes sense, but confessing them to a priest seems weird. Why not go past the middle man and straight to God? It’s not…
Children’s Corner Rainbows are one of the most beautiful parts of nature’s huge variety of incredible spectacles. Why not recreate your own rainbow and perhaps in the process, discover more about how they work? This experiment requires only household objects and can be done relatively quickly and easily – with some impressive effects. To…
Fun to the Xtreme A travelling fun park will be touring Ireland soon with attractions from family rides to ‘white knuckle’ rides. Xtreme Funfair will be making an appearance around the country from March 2, with the first event being held in Swords, Pavilions Shopping Centre Co. Dublin from March 2-19. It will be open…
Personal Profile Chai Brady discovers more about the new director of the Missionary Society of St Columban Navigating an increasingly secular Ireland continues to be a challenge for the new director of the Missionary Society of St Columban, who says in some ways he’s still adjusting after decades spent in the hyper-Catholic Philippines. Despite…
Maria Byrne
Chai Brady
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Bairbre Cahill
Colm Fitzpatrick