General

No Confusion in the Catholic Church
As I begin this article I have just come from Northern Ireland where I hosted two talks promoting The Lumen Fidei Institute. One in Omagh and the other in Derry. The talks were well attended, and we had a particularly lively question and answer session in Omagh. As I am fond of repeating, there is no confusion in the Catholic Church because her teachings are crystal clear, but there are many confused Catholics on account of the false prophets and false teachers who seek to lead many astray. Christ Himself warned us about these false prophets and teachers in St Matthew’s Gospel chapter 24.… Read the rest

The Manchester Bombing

On Monday 22^nd 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 I do not personally know anyone who was either killed or injured in this attack, nevertheless I am acutely aware that we must not in any way take from the fact that this was a great evil.… Read the rest

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 25^th 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 liturgies on the Tuesday would not involve the distribution of Holy Communion.

Negotiating Terms of Surrender

Why is it, that our Irish bishops seem constantly to be negotiating terms of surrender with the world when it comes to the Catholic faith?… Read the rest

I have been traveling around the country giving talks on the need for a Catholic Action movement. I hope to put some of these talks online in the near future. But meanwhile I have not been updating the website. I hope over the next few days to upload my latest articles from the Catholic Voice newspaper. I am giving a talk this Sunday 4th June in the Ballykisteen Golf Hotel in Limerick Junction at 2pm. The final talk in this series takes place in the Sligo Park Hotel on Friday 16th June at 7pm.

I look forward to seeing you there.… Read the rest

Pray for Vocations

The brother of the young eighteen year old American lady, whom I wrote about recently, arrived for a visit with our family on New Year’s day to join his sister. His name is Joe and he is in his early twenties. Joe feels a certain call to serve God as a priest but he not certain about this just yet. Please pray to help him to discern if indeed he is called to serve God as a priest. Last week, these young people returned to America. Gianna, the young lady, had been with us for nine weeks in total.… Read the rest

The Season of Advent

As we enter the season of Advent, where we look forward not only to the coming of Christ’s birthday, but also to His second coming, we are reminded that this is a time of preparation. Primarily, preparation of our souls so that we are ready to meet Christ if he should choose to come at this time and so that we are in a state of perpetual readiness for our own death. I tell my children that it doesn’t matter how they die, or when they die, or where they die, or what they die of. The only thing that matters is that they are in a state of grace when that moment arrives as it inevitably will for all of us.… Read the rest

The Killing of Terminally ill Children

In my last article, I mentioned the importance of precision in the use of language, so as to avoid confusion. Today I want to take a quick break from Pope Pius XII’s allocution to midwives in order to emphasise the same point about language with regard to something more current in Irish society. There are some in Ireland today who favour putting terminally sick children to death if they are not yet born, and if their little lives could be perceived as greatly inconveniencing their parents. Now of course this is not how they describe what they are proposing, because killing sick children is abhorrent to any right minded person.… Read the rest

I realise that things have been very quiet on this site of late and that I haven’t posted anything since November 13th last year. It has been a busy time with two conferences, one in Kerry in December and one in Cork at the beginning of this month. I hope to upload that particular talk in the near future. This talk seems to some to be a little controversial because I am asking questions, and hoping that all those involved in pro-life work in this country, will also ask themselves a few pertinent questions about what exactly in means to be pro-life and how our Catholic faith should have a bearing on how we approach this important work.… Read the rest