For most, cracking open the champagne is the start of a raucously good time. For others, it is the final few seconds of healthy eyesight.  Incorrect popping of champagne corks is one of the most common holiday-related eye hazards, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Eye M.D. Association.  "It's a sobering thought, but many revelers forget that popping the cork on a bottle of champagne is a dangerous activity if done incorrectly," said Andrew Iwach, M.D., Academy spokespers...

Dennis Taylor- I'm gonna tell you something. Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with with him. Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole.  One more thing, you have an all out prize fight, you wait until the fight is over, one guy is left standing. And that's how you know who won.

Cliff Thorburn:  Well he's still not borrowing my cue extension again.

Wrigley's:  We were very proud to be one of the principal sponsors at today's funeral.  St Anne's is a great venue and having Stephe...

Have you been following the, sometimes, nasty debate on the Theology of the Body that has been exercising the Catholic ether for the last year?   Chistopher West has been delivering a popular course of lectures for some time but was attacked for his views by Alice von Hildebrand, who seems to have taken his arguments as a personal attack on her husband.  My wife has links to the main elements of the argument here.

If you want a quick summary - well:

Venerable Pope John Paul:  Sex is good.

Alice ...

I was listening to the radio the other evening.  I was driving from Letterkenny to Drogheda.  There was a programme discussing discrimination against same sex attractants (homosexuals) in homes for the elderly.  The very earnest presenter, who kept referring to the GLBT community (she obviously hasn’t had the feminist wing complaining that it should be LGBT) as if it were, you know, a community, came up with the astounding statistic that “they are two and a half times more likely not to h...

Mc Camley's Third Law was "when people say 'it's not about the money', it is".  An alternative version is "when people say they don't want power, they do".

I was thinking of this last nigth watching Would You Believe on RTE, yet another RTE programme about how awful the Church is and how wonderful it would be if only liberals ruled the Church as well as the world.  There was a panel of about twenty.  The programme opened with a five minute filmed section about how awful the Church was and ho...

People keep saying to me, "why are you not posting, why are you not posting?"

Well, my wife is the webmistress of the website of The Fraternity of St Genesius and she's recently launched a blog and that means she commandeers the computer for hours on end.  Which is fine at the moment with the world cup on - thank God Germany are out - but we may be having conflicts "going forward" - bit like the French and the English.

Speaking of football - check out this goal from Mervue United.

"Because of celibacy, clergy and members of religious orders are all potential child abusers, some just about keeping their instincts under control."

"As for bishops, they are little more than a bunch of twisted, incompetent old men, well aware of evil actions among some of their colleagues but saying nothing in order to protect their power."

"Child abuse was just par for the course."
 
"The Corrupt Church was not just the home of abuse, but the cause of it."

"The Church doesn't have a problem...

This is a funny story.  This is a true story.  This actually happened.

It was the late 1990s, the years of the Drumcree protests, the years when the region was regularly brought to a standstill by Loyalist hoods, the years when three little boys could be burnt in their beds to protest not being allowed to walk on a road.

It was a time when ordinary people did their best to get out, when the road from Belfast to Letterkenny was was nose to tail with fleeing Catholics.

And ordinary Protestan...

Interesting accidental social experiment on the train this evening.  Someone mentioned a TV drama called "Luther" - "A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts."

Each of us, quite by chance, mentioned who they thought of when Luther was mentioned - somone blurted out "Lex Luther", evil nemesis of Superman.  Another mentioned Luther Vandross. 

Another mentioned Martin ...

I was very surprised to see this story in the Manchester Guardian:

A media lynch mob is bent on destroying Pope

Fresh reports about the Pope's past just don't add up. But facts matter little in an issue that has become so politicised.


Oh wait, I misread.

One takes a certain vicarious pleasure in the success of one's class-mates.

In particular it is always good to follow the careers of those who had posts of responsibility in Maynooth.  Micael Ledwith, now a successful new age guru, with his Orbs and Hamburger Universe.  Doubtless we'll hear more of him in the coming months as the Apostolic Visitation of Maynooth gets under way and the trustees/bishops try to explain everything that went on.  I, of course, will be only too glad to make myself a...

During his homily and urbi et orbe address on Easter Sunday and blessing of his new Popemobile, Pope Benedict XVI failed to condemn the recent spate of ATM thefts that have plagued border counties;  he also failed to condemn the torture of frogs by small boys, genocide, adultery, fornication and any programme George Jones or Pat Kenny hosts;  he also failed to mention child abuse.

Commentators have concluded that he supports all of these crimes and doesn't take the issue seriously.

A Vatican sp...

The Irish Independent reports:

Within hours of the court decision paving the way for Good Friday drinking, Limerick traders rushed to cash in on the move with special T-shirts.

But the garments are sure to rile some Catholics, such as one that reads "Officially bigger than the Catholic Church, Munster Rugby".

Others produced by the Repeat Style T-Shirt shop read "Mass will now take place at Thomond Park", while two others showed showed Christ dressed in a Munster shirt and described as "The ...

Speaking of over-reaction, is it possible to use the word "Jew" in a sentence without insulting some group of Jews?  Is there any context in which you can mention anti-semitism without being accused of it.  Apparently not.

Fr.Raniero Cantalamessa has been attacked by all and sundry, called an anti-semite, disrespecting the Holocaust, and worst of all, by his friends, displaying poor judgement.

Here's the piece that got him into trouble - you can read the whole sermon here.

By a rare coincidenc...

Is it just me or did the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, over-react a little to comments made by the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury?

Dr Rowan Williams, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, to be broadcast on Monday, said: "I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it’s quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now.

"An institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly los...

I thought for the times that are in it I would publish a sermon on priesthood.  It was preached last night at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, 1 April 2010, at St Mary's Church, Drogheda, by Rev. John Hogan, Father Director of the Fraternity of St Genesius.  I know that many people in the congregation, myself included, were very moved by his words.

Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14; 1 Cor. 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

The Year of the Priest

One of the most beautiful books I have read was the Venerable Pope John...

Timothy Bartlett

We know The Times knows little enough about the Catholic Church but we didn't realise the extent of their ignorance.

Take their coverage of today's meeting between Cardinal Brady and a group of "survivors".  Ruth Gledhill is always good for overstatement such as "Overturning a centuries-old tradition of deference towards the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland". 

Centuries ago the hierarchy were on the run from the Ruth's fellow countrymen, not experiencing deference from anyon...

There are lots of good articles doing the rounds about the so-called abuse crisis - some simply providing the basic information on who did what and when, others expand a little.  This one by Sean Murphy takes Christopher Hitchens to task.  And we have some of the old reliables - George Weigel and John Allen.

But I want to draw your attention to an excellent article from a secular/humanist/atheist perspective by a guy called Brendan O'Neill.  I was going to summarise it but I think you should r...

...just go go go I don't care how
you can go by foot, you can go by cow
Irish bishops will you please go now.

You can go on skates, you can go on Skis
You can go in a hat but please go please
I don't care, you can go by bike
you can go on a zike bike if you like

If you like you can go in an old blue shoe
Just go go go, please do do do
Irish Bishops I don't care how
Irish Bishops will you please go now!



Just looking at a round up of the news on abuse.  We have the person who is suing Cardinal Brady c...

Prayer for the Church in Ireland

God of our fathers,
renew us in the faith which is our life and salvation,
the hope which promises forgiveness and interior renewal,
the charity which purifies and opens our hearts
to love you, and in you, each of our broth...

Fr Brian D'Arcy and Grima Wormtongue

How do you know Fr Brian D'Arcy is betraying the Church and undermining the faith?

His lips are moving.

"One helpline recorded a significant increase in calls following the latest revelations.

The Rape Crisis Centre said it had to bring in extra staff to cope with the rise in calls last night."

Is is just me or is there something suspicious about the way these agencies report increases everytime something happens on the news?  Is there really a whole cohort of abused people who haven't come forward and do so after watching the rantings of Patsy McGarry or Joe Lyttle?  Though I suppose I often f...

Okay, the internet is about debate, challenging fixed positions, learning, developing, approaching the truth.

No sooner had I my last post up than a message arrived to say I should do more to defend the Cardinal, that my stating of an objective position of untenability was Cassandra-like, that I was a self-fulfilling prophet, an appeaser, a cheese-eating surrender monkey.

I don't eat cheese - ever.

So what to do?

Assuming the Cardinal is basically a good guy which I think he is (though I would ne...

I love this story from Limerick, from the parish of Rathkeale, the parish that brought us "the stump".

According to the Limerick Leader newspaper, the row is over members of the travelling community wearing inappropriate clothes and disturbing Sunday mass at the local church. 

The dispute deepened this week with the decision by the local church choir to boycott the service in protest at the handling of the issue.  The issue came to a head during mass last month, when a member of the congrega...

From the Sunday Independent, 6 December 2009:

Cardinal Sean Brady yesterday heaped further pressure on the Bishop of Limerick over his handling of child sexual abuse complaints while he worked in Dublin.

The Catholic Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh said he had been in contact with Dr Murray and was confident that the bishop would "do the right thing".

The pressure on Dr Murray to stand aside intensified considerably after Cardinal Sean Brady publicly expressed his unease over...

Speaking to the Kerryman newspaper Dr Bill Murphy said he was surprised with the protocol but h...

Further news from Canada reveals that there is a more human angle to this scandal of the Ambassador's residence. 

It seems that during the work, when the walls were stripped, the water and hydro (electricity to you and me) disconnected, the windows missing, somebody thought it would be a good idea to make the housekeeper continue living there "for security reasons".  "She's from the Philippines so they're used to those sort of condidtions" said nobody in particular.

A complaint from a concerned...

The photographs, taken from 2002 to 2003, were compiled in a four-year project that involved 20 computers running s...

What is wrong with Gerard Moloney, editor of Reality Magazine.  Of course it's legitimate to comment on the child abuse crisis, but it's his target I can't understand - promoters of the Latin Mass and anyone who supports renewal in the liturgy.  He writes:

"Something seems wrong when church leaders appear more interested in changing the language of the liturgy than trying to figure out why so many children have been harmed by clerics.  Huge effort has been put into preparing liturgical changes...

You really have to wonder if our church has learned anything during this abuse crisis. 

On the 19th January this letter appeared in the Irish Times in response to a letter by Pat Buckley, Bishop of Larne, Omeath and the Isles.

Madam, – Pat Buckley (Letters, January 13th) inaccurately stated that, at the time of his “sacking”, Fr Brendan Smyth “was ministering in Down and Connor with the knowledge and consent of its then bishop, Cahal Daly”.

It should be noted that Fr Brendan Smyth, ...

It is not so essential to think much as to love much.

- St Teresa of Jesus, OCD

The Number One's for the nine months before and after you were born - gives a great flavour of the time. 

Note to self - Idea for dragons den - compile them for people and sell them for birthdays.  There's a great selection of artists during that eighteen months spanning from Jim Reeves (am I really that old?) to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Monkees, Trogs and Procul Harum.  And in the mix - Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Petula Clark, Beach Boys.

What's interesting is that almost all the songs fro...

Some people commented that they missed the daily St Teresa quotes so returning with a daily (or when I can be bothered) Carmelite quote.  Today':



"I made the resolution never to consider whether the things commanded me appeared useful or not...
 it is love alone that counts.

Forget about whether something is needed or useful; see it (the demand, rule, obligation, etc.) as a whim of Jesus."

- St Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

Six One News:
Cathy Halloran, Midwest Correspondent, reports that the meeting of the bishops tomorrow will be a ...

Hopefully you have all been wondering where I've been for the last while.  Perhaps you had images of me helping out the flood victims of Cork, or Clonmel or Galway.  Well in a sense I have been dealing with floods.  Basically I've been snowed under with events and work and activities and blogging is one of those things that when you get out of the habit for a few days it can be hard to get back into.  Like dieting or praying or painting the damn stairs.

Today was Michael's tenth birthday.  Mic...

Here's a site specially designed for the paranoid priests of Down and Connor who live in continual fear of catching something from a cough or a sneeze or some type of contact with the faithful.

Not one to blow my own trumpet when it comes to the widespread readership of my blog, and the influence that it can have, I might just mention that I received a very nice email from the Northern Ireland Minister for Culture and Sport, Nelson McCausland, in response to my expressing support for his religious freedom.

Nelson McCausland, Northern Ireland Minister for Culture, has stated that he won't attend Catholic services because of his religious beliefs.  For this he has been attacke by the small and the bad, inc the ever sensitive Sinn Féin.

I find myself completely supportive of Nelson's position. He has a religious view and he's entitled to it. It's not an intolerant view in that he, to the best of my knowledge, supports the religious freedom of Catholics to worship as they believe. To force him to p...

Several people have been phoning , emailing and texting madly wanting to know what on earth this story is about.  Well they'll just have to do their research and figure it out.

But be assured it is really funny.

Brian McFatty arriving for funeral

Yesterday Boyzone arrived in Majorca to take Stephen's body home, revealing matching tattoos in his memory. All four have an 'S' for Stephen and the numbers 76 09, the years of his birth and death.  A source said: 'The tattoos were done as a mark of respect for Stephen.'

A Majorcan police statement taken from Bulgarian Giorgio Dochev, 25, who was in their holiday apartment that evening, reveals that Gately had smoked a cannabis joint and that the trio had be...

How many times have we had to listen to commentators go on about the maturity of the Irish people and the best educated generation in the Church etc.  It's all rubbish, though, isn't it?

Two stories struck me today.  First this one about the wedding of Z-lister Amanda Brunker:

Newlywed mum of two Amanda Brunker has revealed the main reason she married her longtime partner Philip McLaughlin was that she didn't want her children to be teased at school.

The 34-year-old former Miss Ireland turned ...

I have always had an interest in the Law and as friends will know, I have in the past exercised a judicial funtion.  So I often have a look at case law from other jurisdictions, particularly as the common law tradition allows judges in one jurisdiction to refer to judgments in other jurisdictions.  This case from Canada is rather interesting:

Osborne
(Osborne v. Canada (Treasury Board), [1991] 2 S.C.R. 69)

In this case, a group of federal public servants wanted to participate in various poli...

Back to school tomorrow for the boys.  And first day in Junior Infants at Scoil Mhuire Fatima for Mary Teresa.  Sigh:

WEE HUGHIE
Elizabeth Shane

He's gone to school, wee Hughie,
An' him not four,
Sure I saw the fright was in him
When he left the door.
But he took a hand o' Denny,
An' a hand o' Dan,
Wi' Joe's owld coat upon him—
Och, the poor wee man!

He cut the quarest figure,
More stout nor thin;
An' trottin' right an' steady
Wi' his toes turned in.
I watched him to the corner
O' the big turf stack,
An...

Something unusual happened to me today.  This morning I submitted a letter for publication to The Irish Catholic.  I have previously had letters published there on a number of topics.  So this morning I emailed the following letter:

Since 2007 bishops, priests and lay people around the world have been resigning from Amnesty International in protest at its decision to begin supporting legal access to abortion as a human right. 

Renato Cardinal Martino, then President of the Pontifical Council...

Have you noticed how odd clerical changes have become?  Time was you maybe started identifying who was retiring, then the Parish Priest moves, curates becoming Parish Priests, curates moving and the newly ordained first appointments.  This season's changes in Killala:

Bishop John Fleming, Bishop of Killala announces diocesan changes for the Diocese of Killala

-  Very Reverend Chris Ginnelly to be Parish Priest of Ballycroy.
-  Very Reverend Gerard O’Donnell to be Co-Pastor, Parish of Kiltane...

This has got to be one of the nastiest little stories still ongoing.  Pope John Paul the Great's friend of many years, Wanda Poltawska, has written a book about their friendship and included a number of his letters to her.  For doing this she has been attacked viciously by the former secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz, who seems to be auditioning for the remake of Mean Girls.  Apparently the Pope faked friendship with everyone except Dziwisz.  This of course is the guy who refused to comply with th...

In his judgement the Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said Mr O'Rourke had not filled in his application form correctly.

He said: "This was an application to become Queen's Counsel.

"Anyone aspiring to that rank must be capable of careful...

Dr Trayce Hansen, writes that "Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual."

And significa...

Can't do pictures for some reason at the moment.

It really was too hot to be sitting in front of a computer the last few days.  Saturday was glorious with football with Patrick in the morning and hurling with Michael in the afternoon.  Sunday was spent in the garden.  The one cloud was when I lay back in the lounger and, because of metal fatigue, I went flying backwards and thought for a few moments I was paralysed from the neck down.  A source of great amusement for everyone else.  I regrette...

Did you know this?  You know the zucchetto, the skull cap worn by prelates?  Well the word comes from "zucca", the Italian for pumpkin.  I wonder who first made the connection between bishops and pumpkins.

This nugget is from the Catholic Dictionary published by Our Sundary Visitor, a book I recommend for all.  And cheap too - €6.40 new in book shops.

Many remain at the foot of the mount who could ascend to the top...I repeat and ask that you always have courageous thoughts.  As a result of them the Lord will give you grace for courageous deeds.

(Meditations on the Song of Songs)



The 25th of May is the Feast of St Mary Magdalen de Pazzi.  From the Hanscom Family blog:

Mystical ecstasy is the elevation of the spirit to God in such a way that the person is aware of this union with God and both internal and external senses are detached from th...

Taking the salute from Obama Youth

Seen and Unseen now available in Vietnamese.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has been invited by the Margaret Sanger School of Eugenics in Boston to attend the commencement ceremony for abortion and sterilization technicians June 20 during which he will receive the David Steele award for commitment to reproductive services.  The Director of the School, Professor U von Asia, said that while they disagreed with some of the Holy Father's views on abortion, they fully supported his opposition to the Iraq war.  The event would provide an oppo...

My parish priest on Sunday evening started giving me this whole spiel about traffic chaos - I thought he was talking about The Irish Open which was held just down the road from Drogheda but then he mentioned the relics and I realised the hand was being taken out of me.

The "big Mass" on Saturday, Feast of St Simon Stock, was covered rather nicely by Poetry, Prayer and Praise including some fine photos which she managed to take with not a single person visible. 

The church was packed ...

"Joseph Ratzinger depends a great deal upon other people for emotional support and he has a large "family" of friends that care about him and treat him as kin. The women in The Pope's life are particularly important to him, and his relationships with them powerfully influence his sense of security and happiness. Pope Benedict XVI may be overly dependent and unsure of himself without a close partner.

The Pope has intense desires and feelings and his personal relationships are deeply emotiona...

However, you thought otherwise. You thought that visiting Yad Vashem is enough...

This dish, which makes a tasty breakfast or branch, is a first cousin to French toast, but with a flavor and texture all its own.

2 cups milk
3 tablespoons sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 good piece of lemon peel
12 slices Italian/French bread (a little stale) 1/2-3/4 inch thick
3 eggs
Pinch of salt
Cinnamon-sugar for sprinkling ...

The Friday Competition - try and find a news service covering the Holy Father's trip to the Near East that doesn't mention his 2006 Regensberg speech which "outraged" Muslims or the recent lifting of the excommunication of Bishop Williamson which "outraged" some Jews just recovering from their "outrage" over the possible beatification of Pope Pius XII and the "outrage" at the restoration of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

Here's one you can have for free.  It provides a d...

Fr. Berg released a brief statement explaining his decision and his motivations for the change:

“After nearly 23 years of life as a Legionary of Christ, I have discerned that it is ...

Lord, how is it, that when there is so little time to enjoy your presence you hide from me?

“Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet, 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnanc...

Apparently the Children's Ombudsman is not at all happy with the HSE.  She had stopped her investigation into their part in the Cloyne abuse saga because they are refusing to cooperate.  Seems the only document they sent was a photocopy of an already publicly available document.  And then on foot of continuing request from the Ombudsman, they wanted to negotiate via senior counsel.  The Ombudsman decided not to waste public many and called a halt to her investigations while going public on th...

Pope Benedict created five new saints on Sunday, including Portugal's national hero Nuno Alvares Pereira, a medieval warrior-friar credited with securing Portugal's independence from Castile.

The pope told pilgrims at the canonisation in the Vatican that the 14th-century nobleman had shown that "in any situation, even of a military and warlike nature, it is possible to act and live out the values and principles of Christian life".

His canonisation has been the subject of much excitement amo...

One of the good guys - Bishop Walter Mixa: "A society without God is hell on earth."

You know the way bishops sometimes can be accused of being on the verge of taking a stand.  Well here's two who have taken stands - and they're not good stands either.

Firstly from Germany:  The Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference and archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, believes that Christ’s crucifixion is just a psychological support for those who suffer.

On Holy Saturday, the archbishop denied...

I promised someone I'd put this up for them.  It's a hymn I wrote to the saints of Carmel.  The first verse is not my own;  it's the traditional Flower of Carmel.  We sometimes use it at our Carmelite meetings.  I added two new verses recently - the second verse to St Joseph, and the final verse on the Brown Scapular.  We're having a special Mass on 16th May (Feast of St Simon Stock) to welcome some new members and to celebrate 75 years of Carmel in Belfast.  It's at 3.00pm and will be in the...

Many people were shocked and surprised to discover that an unattractive woman over forty with bad hair and big eye-brows could actually sing.  For details see here, here and here.

Haven't had a chance to blog for several days, which is strange as I'm off work and home alone, the rest of the family being off in Donegal.  But I have been busy painting, and sandpapering, sugar-soaping, white-spiriting.  Also had to attend a meeting of the Council of the Fraternity of St Genesius tonight, which went on for a considerable length, and grabbed a quick cuppa before my weekly hour at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.  I read a snippet from one of St Ignatius of Loyola's letters - h...