Search Results for 'Catholic church'

The diocese of Ossory has re-launched the diocesan website, www.ossory.ie.

Tony O' Malley attributed to Callan a quality of inwardness. “It was a feudal town with a wall around it”, he noted, speculating that this helped create a sense of detachment.

For many people history is the big events - 1916, the War of Independence, the hunger strikes - and the major political personalities, be they Éamon deValera, Charles Haughey, or Ian Paisley, but that is not the full story.

David Mc McWilliams delivered an inspirational and hard-hitting speech at the launch of the Town of Books Festival in Graiguenamanagh last weekend.

I have always thought it strange why so many women feel isolated from the Catholic Church, when it has at its centre a woman, Mary - the Mother of God. It is not right that many women feel they are ‘second class citizens’ within a church that attempts to reach out to all. Surely without Mary, the New Testament would be worthless. Surely after the Nazarene Himself, the Mother of Jesus, who is venerated by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, is the first and greatest saint in heaven. Mary is revered by all Christian churches, and honoured by Islam. At the very first council of the Church, at Ephesus four hundred years after Christ, she was declared to be the Theotokos, Mother of God (the actual God bearer). But even before that her image, holding the Child, was etched into tombs in the Roman catacombs. Being the Theotokos, Mary could have become remote, unreal from the human experience. After all we are told that she was born free from Original Sin, which as a total ‘theological illiterate’ I don’t fully understand; but I accept the logic that if Mary was not the mother of God, then Jesus was not God. I believe that He was. Yet despite the supreme position of Mary many women feel isolated, uninvolved, as if they have no contribution to make.

I’ve been reading again, for the first time in many years, Graham Greene’s novels, and in particular Brighton Rock, one of his earliest and still one of his finest, a new film of which is soon to be released.

A national collection will be held this weekend August 21 and 22 in Catholic churches across Ireland in aid of survivors of Pakistan's devastating floods. Bishop John Kirby, Bishop of Clonfert and chairman of Trócaire, is urging Irish parishioners to support collections in their local parishes to help Pakistani people cope with the worst flooding in the history of the state. Trócaire is the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

A comprehensive and wide-ranging debate on the issue of school patronage is needed across Galway city and county, according to Fine Gael Seanad spokesperson on education Senator Fidelma Healy Eames.

The county town will this month benefit from the moving of the annual Humbert School to Castlebar from Ballina, which will inject much needed tourism to the town. The school will also boost the Killala economy during the three day event.

Athlone and Ballinasloe have been named as two of the locations around the country where the Government is considering plans to take control of some Catholic primary schools.