My friend L has a tendency to badger me into putting things on my blog.  So here some information on the upcoming All-Ireland Rally for Life.  Last year it was in Belfast so this year it's in Dublin, Saturday 2nd July at 2pm.

Now here's the thing - if you go to the Rally for Life website here you will find a range of nice things, including pre-Rally Mass times and venues - what you won't find, at least not easily, is a hint as to where the rally actually starts.  Might be an idea to put that o...

Not talking about any funeral in particular but at Catholic funerals in Ireland -

Vestments should be black or violet
(I'm not aware the Irish Bishops Conference has given permission for white)

Eulogies are not allowed, even for celebrities
Statement by the Episcopal Commission for Liturgy and the Irish Commission for Liturgy on celebrating a Catholic Funeral.  (November 2003) "It should be borne in mind that the Funeral Mass is primarily an act of praise of God; it would therefore go again...

There are a few things where I don't have a fixed view - one of them is the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.  What I tend to do is react to what I perceive as the prejudices of those who support or oppose.

Basically I have an open mind and the presumption that we should trust the Holy Father, and he thinks there's something in it.  But the problem is that so many of the people one meets on the internet who claim to love the Extraordinary Form, seem rather to hate the Ordinary Form and every cha...

I see the Gaeltacht is to be defined out of existence. The Cork Examiner is reporting that the Gaeltacht Bill will stipulate that within defined districts there must be "at least two-thirds of a district’s population be shown by census data to be daily speakers of Irish. The language should be predominant in a community’s social and institutional domains, schools should teach entirely through Irish and religious services, businesses, sports clubs and other local activities should be throu...