Blog

At this time of the year we have cows calving in the farmyard so it was with some curiosity that I learned of the Mertz glacier in Antarctica calving earlier this month. Apparently the gesticulation period is not as predictable as cows occurring every 50 or 100 years but when the calf is an iceberg […]

We have had a famine of resignations in Ireland but recently this has turned into, what for us, is something of a flood. Some have been voluntary like the two politicians who resigned this week. Others like the handful of Bishops whose resignations were involuntary came reluctantly. The reasons given by the politicians are somewhat […]

Word on the Week. 6th February 2010. We are not told in the Bible why God made Adam and Eve instead of Adam and Steve but it makes sense when a short time later he commands them to “be fruitful and multiply”. We are not told why the one man and one woman in lifelong […]

This film, from the director who gave us “Titanic” is the hottest thing to hit the science fiction world. Aided with 3D glasses audiences can see where the $280 million went in making the film and the Director’s bankers can see the $1 billion it netted in the first 17 days! It is impossible not […]

There is something satisfactory when, in a National scientific competition for schoolchildren the winner out of the 1,000 plus entries was the designer of a home-made stove. It heightens the satisfaction to learn that he did not make it for the cash prize nor for its marketing potential but to have it taken up by […]

Word on the Week. 9th January 2010. We thought postmodernity had put it out of the house but in it comes through the back door. The “A” word was heard in the media just when it seemed adultery had been dropped from the vocabulary. After all the current descriptions of “having an affair” blunts the […]

This New Year’s Eve, at a family gathering, I was asked to quote the words of the above Scottish song. Traditionally it is always sung at the start of a New Year, usually by people gathered in an out of door setting who mangle the words! I, coming from Scotland, was asked to supply the […]

Among the greetings from the East this Christmas came one from someone who was to be in Cebu (in the Philippines) during the early days of January. He was lamenting the influx of Filipinos to worship the effigy of Santo Nino – a representation of the baby Jesus – dating back to 1521. The feast […]

This week a friend sent me a homily recounting the martyrdom of Bishop Fisher for opposing Henry Vlll’s divorce. He wrote, “in defending the King’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Fisher noted how John the Baptist, as Friend of the Bridegroom, Christ, had laid down his life in defence of marriage, “since,” he said, […]