Fr Aquinas Duffy “I suspect that if there is no real radical change in the immediate future, then the priests left will find themselves on a quicker path to the eternal world” We have just begun a new Jubilee Year. We are reminded that we are called to be “Pilgrims of Hope”. I…
Matt Letourneau In late 2024 it was announced that the Cistercians were to leave Mount Mellaray and the future of the monastery is uncertain. Earlier in the summer we visited Melleray and spoke to the then Abbot and we decided to repeat the feature now as a tribute to the monks and the historic monastery.…
Fr Paul Clayton-Lea Despite the turbulence and pressure surrounding the Church in recent decades the vast majority of Irish Catholic parents and many non-Catholic ones too, remain strongly attached to the choice of Catholic schools for their children. This confidence and determination of today’s young parents to defend and maintain their bond with Catholic schools…
In Good Time: A Memoir, by Martin O’Brien (Red Stripe Press, €15.99 / £14.79). J. Anthony Gaughan The Good Friday Agreement is a pair of Agreements signed on April 10 (Good Friday) 1998 which ended most of the urban warfare and violence of the previous thirty years in Northern Ireland. It is made…
A commentary by Jon Rosebank Practised with humility,” write the bishops in their final document from the 2024 Assembly (47), “the synodal style enables the Church to be a prophetic voice in today’s world.” We live, they write, “in an age marked by ever-increasing inequalities” and by “disenchantment with the functioning of democracy.” Students of…
The season of Advent has been a time of preparation for the great Feast of Christmas. The feeling of anticipation built as we got ever closer, week by week. The candles on the Advent wreath got lit, one by one. Their glow became ever brighter. What was it that we anticipated? The celebration of the…
Ann Marie Foley Portlaoise is growing as a commuter town and in diversity, and the parish is something of a ‘United Nations’ of priests and religious from Brazil, China, Romania, Indonesia and India serving with PP Msgr John Byrne, PPVG and a local Deacon Eugene Keyes. “When I came here (in 2000) I was one…
Br Justin Robinson OSB The Sea of Galilee laps gently against the shoreline at Tabgha Priory, a Benedictine monastery offering an oasis of peace in an otherwise troubled Holy Land. Over the past year, the soundscape of war has enveloped the small community of monks who live, pray and work at the place where…
Gift yourself with precious time for your own spiritual recharge, says Peter Kasko It’s that time of the year again. The time when we often tend to forget our humanity, to some extent, and pursue all that is not important. In Matthew (chapter 6), Jesus reminds us not to worry, “but strive for the kingdom…
Solène Tadié (CNA) The doors of the newly restored Notre-Dame of Paris Cathedral were officially reopened to the public during a ceremony last Saturday evening just over five years after a blaze ravaged the iconic structure’s roof, frame, and spire. Authorities mobilised a massive security force of some 6,000 police and gendarmes for the event,…