Courtney McGrailStaff Reporter Ireland’s newest bishop has welcomed immigrants into Ireland in his first Christmas address. Linking how many Irish are immigrants in other countries with recent immigration to Ireland, Killaloe’s Bishop Fintan Monahan noted that at Christmas “our emigrants are very much on our minds”. Dr Monahan welcomed those who have returned to Ireland for…
Month: December 2016
RDS Christmas dinner sees record attendance
The Christmas Day Dinner hosted by the Knights of St Columbanus served a record 3,500 meals this year to those in need. The figure is 500 more than for 2015 and represents a continued year-on-year growth for the charitable event. “On Christmas Day, people like Brother Kevin of the Capuchin Day centre take the day…
The flight into Egypt History, legend and parable
Peter CostelloChristmas is now generally a time of universal celebration and festivity. But the days after the Nativity were different: after the joy of the new child came cruelty and persecution. As always the Bible is pervaded by a sense of the reality of human affairs that people, swept away by sentiment, so often overlook: cruel…
That was the year that was
Brendan O’ReganWell, there’s another year down, a year full of significant stories and media developments, with the prospects of a rather uncertain 2017 ahead. It strikes me that social stability and civilisation are fragile enough and that complacency would be a bad mistake. It was a year of high drama on the political front, from Brexit…
Another 10 commandments that can change your life in…
Daniel Berrigan, the American priest and poet who died in April this year, once wrote a wonderful little book entitled Ten Commandments for the Long Haul. It was intended as spiritual sustenance, sustaining food, for those who walk the lonely, long road of faith and often find themselves discouraged and running out of gas. Berrigan…
Coming out of the crossfire
Casey Schmauder learns how Troubles survivor Richard Moore has coped with blindness and started a charity to help impoverished children
Learning to love a silent God
Greg DalyGreg Daly experiences Martin Scorcese’s Silence
‘We had a guardian angel that looked after us…’
The voices of those who spent the last hours with 9/11 chaplain Fr Mychal Judge have been gathered in a new book
What lies beneath
Paul KeenanModern Dublin sits on a rich seam of Church history, writes Paul Keenan
Surviving past dangers only to encounter new ones is part of the story of humanity
Dr Martin ManserghEach year is marked by three important religious festivals, Christmas, Easter, and St Patrick’s Day, which recalls the coming of Christianity to Ireland at the dawn of recorded Irish history. Each of them is an occasion for families to come together or to contact each other. Christmas especially is a time to remember those outside…