The Skerries Patrician Millennium Project hosted a conference of major international significance last May at the local Community School. Skerries and its islands were an important centre of the ancient Gaelic kingdom of Brega, which from the late Iron Age to the Norman intervention of 1169, approximately covered the same area of modern Fingal bounded … Read more
The issues raised by a 1943 student debate on broadcasting in University College Cork were published the following year as a pamphlet, A Listener’s Opinion. Complaining about the small number of religious programmes broadcast by Radio Éireann, the author, Deasún Ó Raghalliagh asked: Surely if the Catholic religion is a part of our lives we … Read more
JMcC: Tell us about your background. ED: I was born in Dundalk in 1947. My father worked as a boilermaker for Great Northern Railways. When the railway works closed down we moved to Birmingham. One of the things that has struck me over the last ten years is how much I live out of those … Read more
Parish missions were a universal feature of Irish Catholic church life until the mid-1960s. The mission usually lasted for two or sometimes three weeks. The daily rhythm of the mission consisted of early morning Mass with a short practical instruction, the principal mission service in the evening with a full sermon lasting about three-quarters of … Read more
That last January saw the thirtieth anniversary of the end of an African civil war and that this moment passed without comment in Ireland seems at first glance an unremarkable statement. But this was no run-of-the-mill conflict on a continent which has endured more than its share of such tragedies. The war which erupted in … Read more