About thirty years ago, there was an informal secret society in the city of Cork. Perhaps a loose net of those with a shared interest might be more accurate. This group passed the names of certain...
Thursday was the first anniversary of the publication of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse. Commonly called the Ryan Report, its publication cumulated in the realisation of the extent of the...
Cardinal Seán Brady celebrated mass on Easter Sunday with some pretty words about rebirth, apologies and child sexual abuse. He did not mention that in the previous week he was asked by survivors of...
Cardinal Seán Brady, majordomo of the Catholic church in Ireland, is in the dock of the court of public opinion following revelations that he was, as a priest in 1975, involved in silencing two...
Years ago, Father Seán Brady interviewed two survivors of the child rapist (Father) Brendan Smyth and then swore them to secrecy. This was standard operating procedure for the Catholic Church, as...
"You say Saint Patty’s And I say Saint Paddy’s Let’s call the whole thing off." Chances are that somewhere near you is celebrating the 17 March. From Dili to Tucúman, from Nairobi to Wasila,...
After the Ryan and Murphy reports, were published, shock and anger reverberated throughout Ireland and the world. Questions of how the people of Ireland have failed children so grievously were raised...
Catholic morals were deeply embedded in Irish society by the theocracy from which Ireland is only now beginning to shake itself loose. Since the middle of the nineteeth century, the Catholic Church...
It has been a busy year in Irish politics – and hectic to say the least: first the never-ending revelations into Catholic sex abuse finally implicated the state, then the public was treated to the...
Ireland is covered in a blanket of snow. If you listen carefully, you can hear pipes bursting all over the country. Electricity supply is spotty. Heating oil delivery is delayed. In fact, the country...