Many Faithful Catholics feel Isolated and Alone I attended a Mass recently which was celebrated by Fr Shenan Boquet, the president of Human Life International. During the course of his sermon, Fr Boquet told us that we are not alone in this battle. He mentioned how he travels around the world spreading the Gospel of Life and that in each country he visits, there is a group of people who are fighting the battle for life. They may be just … Read More
Thank You for Your Support As I begin writing this article we are just one week into our fund raising campaign for ‘The Lumen Fidei Institute’. In just one week we have managed to raise almost one third of our initial target of €25,000. To those of you who have responded so promptly to this call, a big thank you. Your support and encouragement means so much, not just to me, but to my wife and family as well. I … Read More
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