October, 2020

Inbox I first read of the SAS in a Dublin magazine reported interview with Cathal Goulding of the “Official” IRA in 1971. He said they were deployed in the Six Counties.  Those in the British media who knew of the unit’s existence never mentioned it and the first time most people were aware of it […]

Perhaps most men born in Ireland and risen high in the professions or in the arts or literature were schooled by the  Christian Brothers. James Joyce  attended a school run by that body founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice, before attending ones founded by by St Ignatius of Loyola. St Ignatius, I imagine would have been […]

So –  are the rules governing the sale of alcohol from off-licences far too nanny-state? Is it not interfering in people’s private affairs far too much?  And Casement Park, apparently, is at last going to be rebuilt – after  eleven years!  Did we have to wait this long?  Finally, confessions. Once a weekly or fortnightly affair, very few  Catholics are now going to Confession – in marked contrast to thirty,  forty years ago. Why is that? And are we losing anything by the confession box becoming a storage cupboard? Pat and I explain EVERYTHING….

Nurse Edith Cavell was shot dead in Brussels on October 12th 1915. Ellen Quinn was shot dead in Kiltartan on November 1st 1920. Major Robert Gregory, of Kiltartan and Britain’s Royal Flying Corps,  died in an accident in the First World War. There is a statue of Edith Cavell between St Martin in the Fields […]

You’d think the hanging of a prisoner of war  would suffice for one day’s work in  the “Restoration of Order in Ireland”  campaign pursued by the British Government. But you would be underestimating the zeal of the agents of that restoration.  Kevin Barry was hanged in the morning in Dublin. In the afternoon, Ellen Quinn […]

Dr Gabriel Scally, late of this parish, was on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland about an hour ago. As you probably know, Dr Scally is president of the epidemiology and public health section of the Royal Society of Medicine. Presenter Mary Wilson asked him about the worrying state of Covid-19 spread in Ireland, particularly in […]

Fr Joe McVeigh is a member of the Clogher Mission Team and has asked me to put up this short video about missions and missionaries… https://www.wmi.ie/wms?mc_cid=3e16fafd70&mc_eid=9b0e7d8a9b

Reading Jude’s Blog “Republican Cobh” commenting on Kieran McCatrthy’s account of East Cork Volunteers from 1913  to the recent Northern War – the longest in  Irish history I believe, revived two brief experiences of Cobh and environs when I was myself a Volunteer with Oglaigh na hEireann’s Second Line Reserve (aka An Forsa Cosanta Aitiuil) I […]

A distinguished Dublin Doctor, Chris Fitzpatrickwriting in THE IRISH TIMES says we should not commemorate Kevin Barry, an Irish soldier hanged in Mountjoy Prison after torture and Court Martial by British Military on 1st November 1920. The circumstances were clearly given to the world by  Arthur Griffith, the democratically elected Acting President of the Irish […]

I remember Dublin in the rare oul’ times – colourful public figures,  s strong sense of community,  bars where poets and artists gathered to talk and get pissed. I also remember bare-foot children on O’Connell Bridge or outside the Gresham Hotel, begging for a few coppers to help them live through another day. Last night […]