EXCLUSIVE David Quinn & Colm Fitzpatrick A number of churches are leading by example on green energy and showing parishes all over the country how they can affordably move, with State support, from fossil fuel heating systems to renewable energy ones that will save them money over time. The Government recently announced a major plan…
Month: August 2019
Call for Catholics to keep Croagh Patrick spirit alive
The priest in charge of Croagh Patrick has appealed to Catholics to push for its preservation as a place of pilgrimage and contact Mayo County Council. After almost 9,000 pilgrims summited Croagh Patrick over the weekend, the mountain’s stakeholders are calling on all members of the public to make submissions to the council regarding plans…
A disability campaigner is a welcome face
I hear the words “Marie Antoinette” increasingly used about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex – invoking the late (largely naïve) Queen of France as a symbol of privilege without responsibility. “Doing a Marie Antoinette” is shorthand for availing of every entitlement possible while play-acting at being just a simple milkmaid or shepherdess. Duchess Meghan’s latest caper…
Minister prayed at local parish when she took over FG abortion campaign
Minister Josepha Madigan, who ran Fine Gael’s campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment last year and pave the way for abortion here, has said the first thing she did when given the role was to attend a Taizé prayer meeting at her local church. Ms Madigan, a family lawyer by profession, was asked by Leo…
The great national lie: us and them
I’m always interested in the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and the kind of country we live in. The English, bless them, still think that the world should give them thanks for civilising so much of it. The Americans are convinced that no country has ever been as special as they are.…
Nuns ship ‘life changing’ supplies to disabled in Kenya
After an anonymous donation Irish nuns were able to ship a large number of wheelchairs, standing frames, crutches and more that they had gathered to help children and adults with disabilities in Kenya. The Daughters of Charity (DC) Services in Ireland described the container load of equipment as “life changing” for people with a disability,…
Welcoming a realistic union
The View The 2018 Annual Report of Christ Church Oxford, where I was at college 50 years ago, arrived recently. Christ Church is one of those institutions, which are both academic and ecclesiastical, with the cathedral of the Diocese of Oxford at the back of the front quadrangle. It was founded by Cardinal Wolsey,…
Time-limited backstop wanted as Boris ‘plays hard’ says Nuala O’Loan
Baroness Nuala O’Loan has said she believes the new UK PM Boris Johnson aims to renegotiate a time limit on the Brexit backstop in order to “buy time”. Currently he “is playing hard”, Baroness O’Loan told this paper. Without a time limit “the backstop doesn’t cease to operate until all the member states agree, and…
A radical experiment in Christian living
The Bruderhof community is an oasis of sanity in our world, writes David Quinn A small, little known religious community called the Bruderhof has been gaining a bit of attention lately because of an upcoming documentary about them that is to air on the BBC. The community consists of about 3,000 members spread across…
Boris Johnson gives British Church Trump-like conundrum
Lenin once famously asked, “how can you make a revolution without firing squads?” Boris Johnson, Britain’s newly appointed prime minister, has taken that advice to heart – in his first hours in office, over half the ministers in outgoing prime minster Theresa May’s government were pushed out or resigned. Much like Donald Trump – a…