A constant mantra today is that everything is changing and that all we can be sure of is that everything will keep changing. Some people are frightened by this, preferring to put the wagons in a circle and to try to keep change at bay.

It was a historic week in Westport in more ways than one.

There was a time when very few people had the telephone in their home. The priest, the doctor and maybe the local shop were the usual clients. At that time, in the Ox Mountain region, if you wanted to make a call, you went to the local Post Office.

On our emerald isle, where saints once walked and monasteries flourished like clover patches, the Catholic Church isn't dying - it's evolving.

The west is of course best, but one of the undeniable advantages of living in Dublin is its cultural vibrancy. Whether it is the galleries, or the theatres, or the wide variety of gigs and events, you can usually find something to do of an evening.

In 2017, I was extremely fortunate to be in the presence of former United States Senator George Mitchell at Mount Falcon. I like to claim it was a private audience, as that’s what it felt like.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. So the word goes. And Catholic Rome doesn’t move very far in a day, a year or even a lifetime. It’s why the famous Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, composed a reflection on ‘The Slow Work of God’.

Recently, Bishop Donal Roche, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, said he was worried that the sacredness of the liturgy is being eroded by, for example, people looking for pop-songs at funeral Masses and wanting to bring up footballs and fishing rods in ...

Nobody knows anything. William Goldman, the Oscar-winning writer of screenplays for All the President’s Men, Marathon Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, coined this phrase when speaking of the Hollywood industry.

Here on this ribbon of bog road  where curlews cry and teal and mallard burst from darkening bog-holes  I stand cathedralled.