Pope Francis addressed engaged couples on St Valentine’s Day ten years ago. He gave his now-famous advice regarding the need to say, please, thank you and I’m sorry. He went on to say, “We all know that there is no such thing as a perfect family, nor even the perfect husband or the perfect wife. We…
The Irish Dominicans are celebrating 800 years in this country. They arrived a mere eight years after the founding of the Order and just three after the death of St Dominic. At the time of writing, the seventh most popular article on The Atlantic website is about wisdom to be gleaned from great Dominicans. (The…
Recently in The Irish Catholic, Fr Niall Leahy SJ mentioned the desire to focus on ministry to young people as one of the reasons that Gardiner Street would no longer function as a parish within the Archdiocese of Dublin. The Jesuits are to be commended for taking this step as young adults are so neglected…
At John Bruton’s funeral in February, the homilist, Fr Bruce Bradley SJ, spoke of how we live now in a rapidly secularising age. He said that is not all bad, pointing to the growth in confidence, prosperity and diversity that the country has experienced. Nonetheless, something has been lost. Fr Bradley cited Seamus Heaney’s comments…
Most parents and grandparents will be horrified at the recent headlines declaring that almost a quarter of six-year-olds have their own smartphones. Given the prevalence and ease of access to internet porn, this seems crazy. Some 30 years ago, a friend was horrified when her daughter was conducting an internet search for pictures of the…
Lots of people feel down in January. ‘Blue Monday’, or the third Monday in January, is often called the most depressing day of the year. However, Blue Monday was an invention of someone called Cliff Arnall, who created it as a publicity stunt for a travel agency. In the way of the internet, which manages…
For the first time ever, this year some of my second level students queried whether we should be singing, ‘O Come Emmanuel, the great Advent hymn. The reason? It refers to Israel, and in particular, to ransoming captive Israel. Students politely explained that they do not support Israel’s action in Gaza and as a result,…
With little else in the news aside from wars and rumours of wars (Matthew 24:6), along with murder trials and extreme weather events, I freely admit to seeking escapism when I went with my husband, youngest son and his friend, Jacob, to see The Miracle Club, directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan. The fact that The Miracle…
Forgiveness is an endangered virtue in our society, which seems addicted to the cancellation of people judged to hold unacceptable views. Instead, something like Orwell’s ‘Two Minutes Hate’ is triggered, where people foam at the mouth in anger in programmed ways. However, something unusual happened on Twitter recently, (I refuse to call it X, which…
As you read this, a courageous bishop is sitting in solitary confinement in a Nicaraguan prison – Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa. We are so flooded with bad news that it can sometimes be hard to care about a country thousands of miles away. The Irish Catholic has played a valuable role in helping us…