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The Immigrant Council has produced a report on the state of the slave trade in Ireland. It deals with the trafficking of women, whose bodies are treated as commodities, in a market where the demand is constant. The majority of women come from overseas and are considered by the government to be illegal immigrants, rather […]

In his inspirational studies of the Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis Michael Ward has rescued the planets from the hands of the astrologers! For too long the heavens have been looked upon as the playground of imaginative mystics. Ward in his book, “Planet Narnia” enables us to see how Lewis has reclaimed them […]

Holy week brings with it many depictions of Christ’s passion but few capture it’s essence better than this creation of Kiefer entitled “can you drink the cup?”. The chalice, normally a thing of beauty, is seen to be sprouting thorns. The thorns remind us of those platted by the Roman soldiers to form Christ’s crown. […]

While the great and the good of the G20 nations were gathering in London to save the world from bankruptcy here in Dublin we were holding a conference to extol the virtues of religion. The underlying contention was that religion (the variety we have in Ireland) is good for you. An impressive amount of research […]

Television has the ability to be creative when you least expect it. Indeed the “Big Brother” programme is compelling viewing for many simply because the unexpected may happen! It manages to so bond its viewers to the behaviour of the houseguests that the daily papers have little to write about but much to photograph. The […]

Elizabeth Fritzl has had a hard life. She ran away 30 years ago, when she was 12, to escape her father’s sexual abuse and was brought back home by the Austrian police. Her father, Josef, was a friend of the Major of Amstetten, a respected man in a community that had chosen to forget his […]

Conscience has sometimes been described as the voice of God in the soul of man.   It is God’s ally.   It checks the extremes of behaviour.   A working conscience has saved many a red face. But what happens when it has been disabled?  What happens when its voice has been so effectively silenced that a person […]

In former times bank robberies were conducted from outside the bank. The attackers were easily identifiable by their clothing and weapons. Now it seems that robbers can also come from the inside, be well dressed and have their password to the computer system! In fact our banking system seems to have supported quite a few […]

The speech this week to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce given by our Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has been hailed as the first signs of leadership since the recession began. One journalist likened it to Pilot Chesley Sullenberger’s crash landing of US Airways Airbus A320 Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on the 15th January. The […]