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O King of the Friday whose limbs were stretched on the cross, O Lord who did suffer the bruises, the wounds, the loss, we stretch ourselves beneath the shield of…

Who Set The Table? Were there women at The Last Supper? If not, who set the table? Who laid out the cutlery The cups and plates? Who made sure the…

NCR Online: THOMAS REESE 25 March 2024 After raising expectations with his Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis is punting on a number of controversial issues that the synod process invited…

Holy Week ceremonies will be available online at ourladysisland.ie Holy Thursday 7.30  Good Friday 3pm Holy Sat 7pm Many thanks and a happy Easter, Jim C Entering the way of the…

Western People 19.3.2024 As I write, a sea of daffodils outside the window reminds me that, though yet early enough in the year, Winter has begun to pay its reluctant…

How can Catholicism become more relevant in today’s world? This is the fundamental question that will be addressed by Tony Flannery, the Galway priest who was silenced and forbidden to…

Western People 12.3.2024 As the RTÉ cameras scanned the crowd at the State funeral of the former Taoiseach, John Bruton, it lingered on faces of the great and the good…

Note: Since the Family Tree Seminar in Our Lady’s Island for Sat March 23rd was fully booked in a few days another has been scheduled for Fri 17th May. For…

BY DAN STOCKMAN, March 18, 2024 Editor’s note: “Evolving Religious Life,” a new series from Global Sisters Report, is exploring how Catholic sisters are adapting to the realities of congregations…

St Patrick, Octagon Monument, Westport, Mayo The Monument: A change on the skyline St. Patrick’s Day, 17th March 1990 was not merely the day to honour our Patron Saint, it…

LANCE ASCENDING… Larry, eh… Lance was a pet name. Ah, if ever there was a hard man! Many’s the session we had in the old days – Oh, what! ‘Gave it a…

Can religious belief as we have known it survive in modern Ireland?  As many will know, I have been silenced by the Catholic Church but that isn’t to say, I…

A change of season The chill, dark soil of winter eases the season change over the folded hills of March. Damp, stained shoes from a walk through frost-flaked grass till,…

PRESS RELEASE13 MARCH 2024  On the scale of things, in today’s violent and volatile world, one could justifiably wonder whether access to the arts and the freedom to participate in…

From Commonweal magazine: Fintan O’Toole on the cost of prosperity Paul Baumann, March 12, 2024, Commonweal Fintan O’Toole is a terrific writer, and his We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History…

James F. Keenan March 12, 2024 America Last month in Outreach, a L.G.B.T.Q. Catholic resource sponsored by America Media, I was invited to consider what we as a church might do…

THE REFERENDUM:  Politicians are astute. They test the wind. They read the signs. They tune in to the lurking messages of the electorate. They have their surgeries. They have the…

BY KIMBERLEY HEATHERINGTON 12 March 2024 Ireland’s nuns are vanishing.  Once boasting a peak number of 13,400 members — in the 1960s — Irish female religious orders today count fewer…

Brendan Hoban recently interviewed Rev Alex Morahan, an Anglican priest in Ballina, Co Mayo for Faith Alive on Midwest Radio. His ministry “began in the RC context, in which he…

Western People , 5.3.2024 When the novelist Philip Roth wrote The Plot Against America in 2004, alternative history fiction was not regarded as a very credible literary formula. Roth imagined…