Fr Chris Hayden on searching for a destination for Ireland Remember when the M50 was being widened? Remember the national running commentary on the traffic chaos that arose from what was, metaphorically, an attempt to service an aircraft while it was flying. Some of the chaos was probably avoidable, and the pandemonium that prevailed…
The Tullamore Gospel Choir has just concluded another successful year, Paul Keenan writes It says something of a parish choir when it not only keeps 70 members passionately involved throughout a busy year but can also maintain a long waiting list of prospective singers. This, however, is the impressive boast of the Tullamore Gospel…
Mags Gargan visits a homeless service offered by Crosscare, the social care agency of the Dublin archdiocese This is Elizabeth’s first Christmas in her own home in quite a number of years. She is an elegant, dignified, well spoken lady that completely shatters the stereotypical image of a homeless person. She is perhaps the…
Trócaire’s regional manager for Latin America, Sally O’Neill tells Mags Gargan that Christmas is a time for togetherness Christmas for Trócaire’s Sally O’Neil no longer means the snowy hills of County Tyrone, but the tropical heat and humidity of Honduras in Central America. ”I don’t miss having a white Christmas,” she says, ”I have…
Christmas is God’s answer to human longing, God’s response to the centuries of prayers that lay hidden in our groaning, our sighs, our frustrations, and our religious efforts, each of them a plea, mostly silent, for a divine intervention, all of them asking God to come and rid the world of injustice and our…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… A year of predictable sequels, dire re-makes, the occasonal gem, eccentric ‘indie’ films getting swallowed up by the comglomerates — so what else is new? It began with a lot of whataboutery as to whether Roman Polanski was going to do…
Just a century ago, the firm of Karl Baedeker in Leipzig issued a new edition of their guide to Palestine and Syria. I have been looking through this stout, but easily handled little volume of over 400 pages, bound in bright red cloth, hoping to catch glimpses of the Holy Land as it was…
Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s speech against the Vatican set the scene for low media standards, writes Fr Andrew McMahon It was ironic to hear Taoiseach Enda Kenny lament, a couple of weeks ago, ”a grievous loss of standards” at RTÉ, given that the backdrop for his comments was a controversy around alleged child abuse by Catholic…
Paul Keenan
Mags Gargan
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello