Yes, we’ve been having a tough year, and for some it has been a lot tougher than for others. Still, it’s no harm to get some perspective. This was thoroughly provided by The Hunger: The Story of the Irish Famine (RTÉ 1). The first episode was shown last week on Monday and Wednesday and it…
Notebook Once upon a time, I was a media celebrity — for about a day. An article I wrote about weddings won me a spot on ‘Liveline’, then hosted by Marion Finucane: literally my 15 minutes of fame. The article was based on an amalgam of wedding experiences from the parishes I had been in.…
“God has abandoned you all,” was the quip from an aggressive secularist to me on social media recently. Of course, the irony was my correspondent didn’t believe in God. What was it C.S. Lewis said about atheists not believing in God and yet hating him? Still, feeling abandoned by God is an authentic experience and…
Dear Editor, Re David Quinn’s article ‘Dublin now needs an archbishop who is not afraid to be counter-cultural’ [IC 19/11/2020]. I agree completely with David Quinn and for some time now I have been disappointed with the archbishop. Now more than ever we need someone who is positive and a voice that lifts people up,…
Writing about the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition bursaries last time round, I ran out of space before alluding to another competition – the Top Security Frank Maher Classical Music Awards – held in October. This has been an annual event since its establishment in 2001 by Emmet O’Rafferty, Chairman and CEO of Top Security,…
This has been a strange and difficult year for publishers, large and small. As religious and spiritual books come largely from small firms, they have been hit very hard. With lockdown across their main markets closing bookshops, online purchases, click-and-collect, and special localised deliveries have been the trend. So sales do go on, but many firms…
Chai Brady, Ruadhán Jones and Jason Osborne There is widespread relief at a return to public Mass in the Republic, with many parishes now looking to the challenge of having as many people as possible present for Christmas Mass. Catholics in the North, however, will have to wait until December 11 before a return to…
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was much praised for writing openly about having suffered a miscarriage last July. She and Prince Harry felt “unbearable grief” after they lost their second baby. The miscarriage occurred while she was changing the nappy of her one-year-old son, Archie. “I knew as I clutched my firstborn child that I was…
The View November was the month the skies began to lift. In a year that for most people has been an endurance test there was some limited compensation in the fact that on average, despite incidents of flooding and high winds that brought trees down, the weather has been distinctly better than average, though not…
The Polish Pontiff’s reluctance to believe abuse allegation is a black mark against him, but it does not take from the greatness of his papacy, writes David Quinn Pope St John Paul II does not emerge well from the recently published Vatican investigation into Theodore McCarrick, the former and now disgraced cardinal archbishop of Washington…
Brendan O’Regan
Michael Kelly
Peter Costello
Mary Kenny
David Quinn