Part of the price paid for writing a weekly column in the Western People and presenting a weekly religious radio programme on Midwest Radio is that I'm often the recipient of unsolicited material that someone somewhere decides I need to read.

I’m a bit of an optimist myself, tending to see the glass half full rather than half empty but looking around me I’m beginning to wonder where in the world we are going. It seems to me the world is getting crazier by the minute.

Nobody should be expected to write a column in All-Ireland final week. It is not as easy as it might seem, this task of writing a weekly column in the Western People.

The last Sunday in July will see thousands of people make the annual pilgrimage to climb Croagh Patrick.

It could be the weather or it might just be the general ambience that has bathed Mayo in affability now that we are in the All-Ireland Final, but I am about to do something that I have avoided doing in fifty years of writing this column.

For one Monday this July, Ballina was the undisputed capital of Europe. Nobody put up a sign.

If you’re wondering how to measure the performance of the main sporting associations in Ireland, two outstanding recent successes would immediately suggest that the highest accolade should be awarded to the GAA.

As we walk the roadways and isolated lanes of the Ox Mountains, we will hear the hum of bees this summer. These buzzing things go about their busy lives, asking for nothing, minding their own business and managing their secret world.

If the Government believes easing one-off housing restrictions will reverse rural decline, it is sorely mistaken. It may help some families remain in their communities, but it will not solve the problems hollowing out rural Ireland.

There’s a moment early in Archbishop Michael Neary’s new book where he tells a room full of priests that it’s alright to shake a clenched fist at God. Not figuratively. Actually, shake it.