Author Archives: John Lacken

Morning Meditation on the Gospel Just over a year ago, as part of my effort to keep up the practice of a daily morning meditation, I decided to take the time to read through St Matthew’s Gospel taking it one chapter at a time. I highly recommend this practice of getting to know the Gospels, with the Catholic caveat, that we are not free to interpret the Gospel’s meaning according to what we think it means, but must always bow … Read More

The Manchester Bombing On Monday 22nd May 2017 at approximately 10.30 in the evening, just after a concert in the Manchester Arena by the American singer Ariana Grande, a suicide bomber detonated a home made explosive device killing himself and twenty two other people and injuring over one hundred others. The ISIS organisation claimed responsibility for the attack. I ask your prayers for all involved in this horrible tragedy. It is somewhat easy to be dispassionate about this event because … Read More

Lack of Ability to Think Rationally In this article I want to cover a couple of different strands of thought which have come up on account of some recent events in my life and which I want to relate to my most recent articles covering lack of catechesis, the failure of the Irish ‘catholic’ education system to pass on the faith to the children that are taught in those schools, and the surrendering of what I called ‘catholic territory’ to … Read More

No Mass in the Diocese As I write this article, we are just leaving a week whereby two of our national newspapers reported that an Irish diocese would not be celebrating Holy Mass on Tuesday 25th April 2017 because the bishop was holding a meeting with the priests of his diocese and because he also wanted to prepare the laity for a future wherein Holy Mass may not be available every day by holding lay led liturgies. The lay led … Read More

Choosing a Topic I find that having to write a fortnightly article for the Catholic Voice is a great discipline. Often times, if I am not writing on a particular theme, I do not know exactly what I will write about from one fortnight to another. But, because I know that I have an article to write, I will be mulling things over in my head wondering if this topic or that subject matter would be suitable for an article. … Read More

Cardinal Caffare & Sister Lucia of Fatima Recently, I mentioned that Cardinal Carlo Caffara received a letter from Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the seers of Fatima, stating that, “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” I think that the significance of this simple statement is lost on many people given that sacramental marriage is no longer held in the high esteem in which it should be held. … Read More

Lack of Catechesis is Destroying the Faith I have begun looking at the problem of the terrible lack of catechesis in the western world and of the effects that this is having on the Catholic faithful. That this problem is not just confined to the laity was recently highlighted to me, once again, by our own parish bulletin from last week. In it we find the following. “The 12 noon Mass on St Patrick’s Day will be a special celebration … Read More

Family Difficulties. I want to begin taking a look at some of the problems that we face as families, as Catholics, and as a nation, in our current times. I also want to look at these problems particularly from the perspective of family life. What is ‘family’? Where does ‘family’ come from? What is the role of ‘family’ in the world? What role do parents have, as parents, and as husband and wife? One of the reasons for this focus … Read More

Voices of the Church on Modesty I am very much aware that many find the subject of modesty to be particularly sensitive and difficult to deal with. It can be embarrassing for those who choose to speak out, and for those who receive the correction. People get angry, they feel humiliated, or sometimes they just don’t seem to care. One lady wrote to me recently me and told me that she found one of the articles on modesty “challenging, but … Read More

Marriage! The Virtue of Modesty Few Catholics understand ModestyI find that when dealing with the subject of modesty, particularly in regard to how one dresses, very few Catholics seem to understand either the true nature of modesty or the importance of this virtue. It is a very sensitive subject particularly for women, because it is always personal, dealing as it does with how we dress, how we choose to present ourselves and with how we would like others to see … Read More

Pray for VocationsThe brother of the young eighteen year old American lady, whom I wrote about recently, arrived for a visit with our family on New Year’s day to join his sister. His name is Joe and he is in his early twenties. Joe feels a certain call to serve God as a priest but he not certain about this just yet. Please pray to help him to discern if indeed he is called to serve God as a priest. … Read More

Marriage! The Beauty of Womanly Dignity Back to ModestyAs we begin the New Year I am back to one of the recurrent themes of these articles, the need for modest dress. Just before Christmas, I went shopping for women’s clothes. In our modern era of ‘transgender this’ and ‘transgender that’, this might not seem so strange. Some might think that I have finally discovered my true gender. But Catholics know that God only created Male and Female humans. There are … Read More

Family BreakdownI have been doing a little research of late into the problem of absent fathers and the damaging effects the absent father has on his children, particularly on his daughters. Christmas is a sad time for many people on account of things such as bereavement, unhappy family memories, particularly those from an unhappy childhood, family breakdown and other family issues. It is a time when we must turn to the Holy Family in praise and joy but also to … Read More

The Season of AdventAs we enter the season of Advent, where we look forward not only to the coming of Christ’s birthday, but also to His second coming, we are reminded that this is a time of preparation. Primarily, preparation of our souls so that we are ready to meet Christ if he should choose to come at this time and so that we are in a state of perpetual readiness for our own death. I tell my children that … Read More

The Killing of Terminally ill ChildrenIn my last article, I mentioned the importance of precision in the use of language, so as to avoid confusion. Today I want to take a quick break from Pope Pius XII’s allocution to midwives in order to emphasise the same point about language with regard to something more current in Irish society. There are some in Ireland today who favour putting terminally sick children to death if they are not yet born, and if … Read More

Marriage! Family Matters …cont’d God is OrderGod is a God of order. Simply put, this tells us that God does everything for a particular purpose. He creates things for a purpose and we have ‘right order’ when that purpose is being followed. The maxim ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ captures the essential essence of right order. Conversely, disorder, is when persons or things are used contrary to the purpose for which God created them. The Importance … Read More

Pope Pius XII – Allocution to MidwivesIn the coming weeks I would like to take a look at Pope Pius XII’s allocution to Italian midwives from October of 1951. This allocution is very important for those who wish to have a proper understanding of marriage particularly when, as we have seen, a former President of Ireland has joined with a group of dissenting Catholics in calling for the over turning of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’, falsely stating … Read More

I realise that things have been very quiet on this site of late and that I haven’t posted anything since November 13th last year. It has been a busy time with two conferences, one in Kerry in December and one in Cork at the beginning of this month. I hope to upload that particular talk in the near future. This talk seems to some to be a little controversial because I am asking questions, and hoping that all those involved … Read More

On November 5th I gave a talk at the annual Catholic Voice conference in Limerick. You can listen to the talk HERE You can download a transcript of the talk HERE This talk points out that the Catholic Church is being undermined from within by those Catholics who promote false and misleading teaching all the while claiming that it is what the Church teaches. It uses a simple mathematical formula to help Catholics to understand the second Vatican council. Stress … Read More

Marriage! Men & Women reluctant to Marry Young The Traditional Catholic FamilyReaders of the Catholic Voice may be interested to know that I now present a half hour programme on Radio Maria Ireland at 4pm on Friday afternoons called ‘The Traditional Catholic Family’. Radio Maria Ireland do not have a standard broadcast licence at present in Ireland, so the show is only available either online or in Dublin and Cork with a DAB (digital audio broadcasting) Radio. You can also … Read More