Personal Profile In June of this year, the parish of Kilskeery gathered in St Macartan’s Church for an eagerly-awaited day – the celebration of Canon John McKenna’s 60 years in the priesthood. Reflecting on his six decades of service, Canon McKenna told me that no life “could have been more enjoyable and rewarding”. He recalls…
Henri Nouwen once suggested that if you want to understand the tragedy of the Second World War, you can read a hundred history books about it and watch a thousand hours of video documentaries on it, or you can read the Diary of Anne Frank. In that single memoir of a young girl imprisoned and…
At least two Spanish archdioceses have expressed their support for the Church in Nicaragua, which is being persecuted by dictator Daniel Ortega, with messages of solidarity on social media, especially for the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando José Álvarez. Spain’s primatial archdiocese of Toledo, said on Twitter “We entrust the entire Diocese of Matagalpa (to God)…
The Norwegians and Dublin’s Christ Church When we Irish set off on a holiday, or related pilgrimage (to repeat myself slightly from the other week), we inevitably turn south. Because of this we often miss many interesting things. It seems our chilled Hyperborean hearts need a large supply of those “beaded bubbles winking at the…
Dear Editor, As many of your readers will be aware, it is proposed to make radical changes to the Junior Cycle curriculum for SPHE. The new curriculum proposes to focus the attention of our 12-15-year-olds on such topics as: sexual identity, contraception, pornography and the interrogation and questioning of social norms of behaviour. We have…
Imagine if members of a football club campaigned for the ball to be oval, with 15 a side. It would be fair to say they were really rugby fans and were in the wrong club. So said Kieran Cuddihy on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, Wednesday) in his introduction to a piece on the synthesis report…
As the saying goes tempus fugit and I am remembering the initial Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition (VDISC) held in 1995 with soprano Orla Boylan its first prizewinner. Ms Boylan still retains the distinction of being the only Irish singer to have been awarded the competition’s premier prize. Competition But, as often happens, competition losers…
Wanted: Ireland’s Volunteer of the Year Nominations have opened for the 2022 Volunteer Ireland Awards and the public is being asked to nominate Ireland’s ‘Volunteer of the Year’. The Volunteer Ireland Awards take place annually and celebrate the “immense contribution volunteers make to communities across Ireland”, a statement from the company said. Volunteer Ireland CEO,…
Scientific experiments are an excellent way to learn about the world around you and also allow you to create, imagine, and explore. Although in films scientists are often wearing long white lab coats and are usually surrounded with test-tubes of bubbling liquids, you don’t actually need any of these things to do your own scientific…
The Sunday Gospel On a sabbath day Jesus was invited for a meal to the house of a leading Pharisee (Luke 14:1). No table was considered blessed unless a scholar sat at it. The body will savour the delights of victual and vine all the more if the meal is salted with lively table-talk. In Luke’s…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan
Chai Brady