It was Christmas Eve, 1977, and my brothers and I had finally stopped waking up my parents, in the wee small hours, as we crept a little too noisily along the hall to see if Santa had arrived. My mother, one eye open and one eye closed, would meet us on the stairs, around one…
Martina Purdy
When conversion becomes a crime
It’s almost 40 years since Jeffrey Dudgeon successfully changed the law in Northern Ireland. And it took courage as he was living in real fear, under an unjust law: his house had been raided, and he had been arrested and interrogated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. His crime? Dudgeon was a gay man and homosexual…
The Mother of Christ gets a new movie
Hollywood can’t resist a good love story, but how do you make a movie about divine love and the most famous woman in the world? With great difficulty. Netflix has just spent US$70 million, making a film, simply entitled Mary. The film recounts the events around the birth of Jesus, through the eyes of Mary,…
A faith worth living for
Two bishops stood on Co. Down hillside, facing each other, both draped in blood red, the colour of the martyr. It was a poignant scene at the weekend, as the Bishop of Down and Connor pondered the stone monument of St Patrick, which was illuminated in red, as the sun went down at Saul, the…
The new evangelisation
An Irish stonemason, with little education, became one of the great evangelists of the last century. And his story is now entwined with the famous American bishop Robert Barron, himself the son of Irish emigrants, whose Word on Fire network has gone global. I heard the story at St Comgall’s School on the Falls Road…
The light of Christ and the law
Claire Brennan is a Catholic mother of four who was arrested in October last year while praying inside a so-called “safe-access zone” at Causeway Hospital in Derry. Brennan (52), of Doneysheil Road, Rasharkin, has a court date on December 2 and faces a fine up to £2,500 if convicted. In legal terms, the charge is that…
Love in the age of anti-Catholicism
It was a summer’s day in Mayo, and the heavens were weeping, when I first heard the story of John’s conversion. He had been raised in a family who lived without faith, a family with a father who drank too much. John grew up hating his father, but like him, developed a thirst for that…
Modern paganism in a darker world
Wandering down a shopping aisle in Belfast this week, the signs of the times were on display: pumpkins and skulls of Halloween on the right and left, and, straight ahead, the frosted glitter of Christmas baubles, with everything but the crib! Halloween, which marks the eve of All Saints, is upon us, but too often…
Remaining silent in the face of fury
Standing on a street corner after Sunday Mass the other day, I was assailed by fury. I had joined a silent pro-life protest, organised by the Canadian parish I was visiting, and was carrying a placard that read: “Abortion kills children.” A young woman, who had stopped at the traffic lights, rolled down her window,…
Pope’s warning about a demonic addiction
About four years ago, I received a telephone call from a priest who invited a friend and I to a meeting. The priest didn’t actually say what the meeting was about – he just wondered if we might be interested in learning about his mission. We travelled to the Donegal border, and the priest introduced…