A review of the press
State’s relations with church now ‘more real’, says Kenny
Irish Times – “Ireland needs as extensive a diplomatic footprint as it can have across the globe. That has always been my position.” When one had difficulties with particular states, a presence on the ground was crucial, said Mr Martin. “For example, having eyes …
Read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0216/1224311853499.html
8% rise in marriages in Northern Ireland
Belfast Telegraph – The number of marriages in Northern Ireland is on the increase, a campaign group said.An 8% rise in weddings since 2009 has been linked to the relatively high number of religious people. The trend is going in the opposite direction in Great Britain. Peter Lynas, Northern Ireland director of the Evangelical Alliance, said: “It is great to see more people getting married, even when times are tough financially and people might have been tempted to avoid the cost of a wedding. “There is overwhelming evidence that those who marry live longer, happier lives.”
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/apps/8-rise-in-marriages-in-northern-ireland-16116454.html#ixzz1mXCBYozI
Visiting Pope would be treated with respect, says Taoiseach
Irish Examiner – The Pope will be treated with respect if he comes to Ireland, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said as he insisted the closure of the Vatican embassy was not about religion. Under pressure from Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to reverse the decision, Mr Kenny said Pope Benedict would be welcomed in a manner befitting his position.
Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/visiting-pope-would-be-treated-with-respect-says-taoiseach-539949.html#ixzz1mXBhPLK1
O’Dowd ‘awaits’ NI grammar school review
UTV – NI Education minister John O’ Dowd has said he will await the publication of a major review into Catholic post-primary schools, before passing judgment. This comes after an Irish News article published on Friday suggested that the report will concede partial academic selection in Catholic schools. While the Church is against academic selection, Catholic grammar schools in Northern Ireland have fought a long battle in favour of the use of 11-plus style tests. Mr O Dowd spoke to UTV at the unveiling of a brand new £22million school for Our Lady and St Patrick’s College in east Belfast.
Read more: http://www.u.tv/News/ODowd-awaits-grammar-school-review/9ce2ffcb-ae55-475e-b428-a38878390711
Health policy should consider social factors, say RC bishops
Irish Times – The Irish government has been urged by a group of bishops to pay more attention to improving public health rather than just providing health services. The Council for Justice and Peace, set up by the Irish Catholic bishops, published Caring for Health in Ireland yesterday, which analyses the healthcare reform outlined in the programme for government. The council said it was concerned that the Government’s thinking paid too little attention to the social factors which affect health and focused on a narrow health-services view of health policy.
Read more : http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0214/1224311746594.html
Any senator or TD who tried to raise the issue of clerical child abuse in the Dail would have been shouted down
Independent.ie – Kevin Myers writes : If the Vatican was in any doubt about the relative futility of appeasing the apology-culture that we now live in, it shouldn’t be any longer. “I want the Pope to know that if he’s invited to Ireland — and in fairness, he is welcome to come — he must apologise to the people of Ireland and meet survivors of abuse”: thus, Michael O’Brien, former mayor of Clonmel, and himself a victim of abuse, as quoted in the ‘Sunday Times’ over the weekend. He must apologise, must he?
…no comparable apology has been given to the people of Ireland by any former Taoiseach or ministers for education, health or justice, for the wrongs done to children within their legal areas of responsibility down the decades. The Catholic Church had no power that was not given it by the democratically-mandated governments of Ireland. Politicians fell over themselves to kiss the ermine hem of episcopal vestments. Even supposedly secular politicians such as Noel Browne and Sean McBride deferred abjectly to John Charles McQuaid.
From the first hours of “independence”, the political heirs of 1916 were determined to exhibit chronic dependence, and to show that Irish republicanism was merely Irish Romanism in a political garb. Ireland was ruled by an unholy compact between the Catholic Church and by a political caste that almost wholly subordinated itself to the requirements of the Catholic hierarchy. Even the special provision given to the Catholic Church in the 1938 Constitution was removed in 1973 only at the instigation of Cardinal Conway, a northerner who thought the deletion might smooth the path to a united Ireland.
That was then. Today, within the ruins of the Irish economy, only one financial figure remains intact and inviolable, rather like Churchill’s dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone; it is the redress bill of €1.36 billion to be given to victims of clerical abuse. This figure is as much related to reality as the Bertie Bowl, Dublin 4 property prices in 2008 and Malawi’s task-force to seize the Falkland Islands.
Read more – http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-any-senator-or-td-who-tried-to-raise-the-issue-of-clerical-child-abuse-in-the-dail-would-have-been-shouted-down-3019183.html
Rare images of missionaries who worked in Raj India
Irish Times – The photographs, preserved as glass-plate slides, were found in the deanery at Killaloe, Co Clare, and have been digitally remastered and published online by the Church of Ireland. The evocative images capture the forgotten world of Victorian …
Read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0216/1224311854249.html
New book details life on Tory Island
Derry Journal – Life on Tory Island off the cost of Donegal is examined in detail in a new edition of the Altas of the Irish Rural Landscape. The illustrated book, which is published by Cork University Press, features an intricate analysis of the island, which lies nine miles off the coast of Donegal. It is the second edition of the atlas to be published, although it has undergone a major reworking with the inclusion of more than 500 new maps and photographs, and six case studies on interesting locales, including Tory. The book looks at all aspects of Irish life and society, from archaeology, peat bogs, settlements, churches, to handball alleys. It also features a collection of maps from the earliest drawn to the latest cutting-edge cartography. In the case study, written by Jim Hunter, a former administrator at the University of Ulster, Tory is described as the “most remote and exposed of all the inhabited Irish islands.”
The book also examined the key role faith and spirituality has played in the life of the island. It recounts how Saint Colmcille came to the island in the sixth century and established a monastery there. Its remote location was ideally suited to remote monastic life. The ruins of a church founded by St Colmcille, the Church of the Seven Saints, can still be seen on the outskirts of the island’s West Town. The church gets its name from a legend where a boat containing seven holy people, one of them an Indian holy woman, was wrecked close to the island and their bodies were buried beside the church. According to island tradition, the next morning the body of the Indian woman rose to the surface and she was buried separately.
Read more – http://www.derryjournal.com/lifestyle/new_book_details_life_on_tory_island_1_3486730