Priests and others in ministry in different parts of Ireland have asked me how our new funeral policy is working out. This policy was introduced in Cork and Ross in 2021, as we left Covid restrictions behind, enshrining some of our Covid learnings regarding funerary practice. Some local pastoral concerns that had been crying out…
I was asked to preach at the diocesan celebration in Gougane Barra at the start of October. We were marking the 1,400th anniversary of the death of St Finbarr, so it was a great privilege to be asked
It’s official — the significance of Baptism in Irish parish life is the top ‘hot-button’ issue for readers of this page. In all my years of contributing here, nothing else has exercised readers in the way this topic did in the July 23 edition. Reactions have been flooding in (quoted below, with permission). My thesis that…
An irate mother of a First Communicant complained about all the hoops her family had to go through to participate in the ceremony: enrolment and Mass attendance and First Confession and everything. She might be the kind of parent so well titled by Fr Martin Delaney in these pages: a “bouncy castle Catholic”, i.e. one…
I spent a fortnight driving round Germany earlier this summer, taking in many interesting spots in central and northern Germany. These included the birthplace of Bach (Eisenach, where Martin Luther also studied), Buchenwald (with the remains of the WWII concentration camp) and Weimar. In northern Germany, I saw Kiel and the nearby Kiel Canal (which…
We have a name! (Or, Habemus nomen as the cardinal who announces a new pope might put it). At last, our family of parishes has a name of its very own. Since last September, when I took up my new West Cork coastal appointment, our pastoral unit has had the somewhat unwieldy title of “The…
I asked you for your prayers when last I wrote on this page. And you prayed for me. The result was remarkable. Thank you. You may remember the reason for my request — my way of coping with an invitation to preach a Lenten mission in a parish on the southwest side of Chicago. I…
This Lent, I have taken on a project that is either incredibly brave or incredibly foolhardy. This undertaking of mine is also way above my pay grade, one of those proposals which seemed a good idea when it was a long way off, but now seems a lot less so. I have agreed to preach…
My late father, Denis Cotter, was a teacher all his life. As a national teacher, he taught in the classroom for over 40 years, the first 13 years in what was then the new Dublin suburb of Crumlin, and the remainder in a small two-teacher school in Ballinacarriga near Dunmanway in West Cork. He retired…
You may or not have seen the movie, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It’s good in spots, though not every bit of it thrills me. One funny interlude comes when Reg, the leader of the anti-Roman guerilla faction, asks its members: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” The objective of the question was…