Rumblings from the Bunker

                                    IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR THE CHURCH? I have been pondering this question for a long time now. Maybe it’s an age thing but I am so tired of the language of crisis. It must be twenty years now that I am listening to talk of the various crises facing the Church with a host of names attached to them including, crisis of faith, crisis of vocations, and crisis of identity. This talk has oftentimes been accompanied with a…

Recently I was a little alarmed to hear someone,  whom I thought would know better,  display a huge ignorance with what happens at Mass. Of course there are many things that happen at this beautiful and most extraordinary of experiences that we call The Mass or The Eucharist, including sorrow for sin, the communal expression of what we believe in the Creed and a missioning back into the world to spread, and indeed live, the Gospel. However at the core…

                A PLETHORA OF CLOTS AND A MYRIAD OF PRAYER So I have been on a journey, a journey which had its own language. It was the language of hospital, doctors and nurses, of scans and tests and my new key term, the D-dimer! This term is now an important one in my vocabulary. The closest I had got to this, up until a few weeks ago, was one of the treats of my youth, the dime bar! I now…

                                                  RUMBLINGS FROM THE BUNKER                                                                 UNHOLY SMUDGE!                                                                       Next Wednesday, February 14th, is Ash Wednesday. It’s also St. Valentine’s Day. A romantic fish dinner for two and no desserts or wine! 😀. All over the country, indeed all over the world, droves of people will turn out to get their ashes. Do you remember a number of years ago a famous politician was known for topping up his own ashes during the course of the day, mindful of the…

‘And some say love is holding on and some say letting goSome say love is everything and some say they don’t know’ Perhaps Love, John Denver/ Placido Domingo One can only imagine the amount of songs that have been written about love. This is not to mention all the love poetry. Whilst he does not appear in the Church liturgical calendar, the coming days will see a big focus on St. Valentine. The first Valentine was a priest martyred under…

There’s something happening out in Straffan, or maybe more accurately in St. Brigid’s.As I am sure you are aware, we are in the happy position in our faith community, sometimes called a parish, that we have not one but two patron saints, and if that wasn’t remarkable enough, the two said patrons are also our two national patrons. Yes, we are doubly blessed in Brigid and Patrick. Yes there’s no doubt there’s something happening out in St Brigid’s in Straffan.…

Well the mince pie season is in full swing and I am delighted, though I must confess I find the mince pie is getting more and more like the sausage: it is quite difficult to get a really good one. Actually come to think of it the sausage is worse. Unfortunately more often than not I am disappointed in the sausage. Too much fat, too much water, way too much salt, poor quality and sadly often pretty tasteless. That’s the…