Occasional Scribbles

This week former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the current Federal German President, Joachim Gauck, spent 90 minutes talking to Mayb...

At a press conference in Berlin this afternoon SPD's Sigmar Gabriel has announced that Peer Steinbrück will be the SPD's candidate i...

A former Magdalene Laundry 'inmate' on RTE's Morning Ireland today told some of her story. At that time young men all over Ire...

Kindness and friendliness of staff at NRH is palpable. The column below appears in this week's INM Irish regional newspapers. B...

RTE reporter on RTE News at One today: ".... She would have went....". And that from our national broadcaster. Really?

"They didn't talk about God, they just did God." Words spoken by Emma Spence at the funeral service for her father and two b...

The piece below appears in this week's INM Irish regional newspapers. By Michael Commane Out walking with a colleague and accompanied...

German news this evening carries a story about a Spanish complaint concerning Ryanair. Ryanair have had four emergencies in five days in Spa...

And at Doncaster today the great Aidan O'Brien kept saying 'listen' when he was not saying, 'I should have ran a pacemaker...

A senior Irish policeman said on RTE Television news yesterday when talking about a crime: "Informaiton coming to our disposal."

The piece below is the Thinking Anew column in today's Irish Times By Michael Commane Two experiences in recent weeks have made me si...

Martin Luther King - the appalling silence of good people Justice Minister Alan Shatter, opening a conference to mark the centenary of...

It's interesting how the readership of this blog soared in the days immediately after the publication of the church audit, which include...

On good advice a post has been removed from this blog. For the moment there will be no further discussion on the National Board for Safegu...

There was a blog posted on this blogsite earlier today. It has been removed by the author.

In the next days it is hoped to tell on this blog the story of 'Fr Y' - at least some of it - what is known to this writer.

It is disturbing this day to hear church figures talk about child sex abuse. This same church speaks with such 'authority' and cer...

The final sentence in the Martini interview is: "I have a question for you: "What can you do for the Church?" This is my pe...

There is a photograph in the current issue of The Irish Catholic of a priest, dressed in liturgical vestments, giving Communion to a little ...

Below is the Cardinal Martini Interview How do you see the situation of the Church? The Church is tired, in prosperous Europe and in Am...

When an Italian cardinal makes wry comments about cassocks and all the other nonsense then surely it is time for people to listen and take a...

What follows is taken from Reuters. The former archbishop of Milan and papal candidate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said the Catholic Chur...

Breda O'Brien in her article in yesterday's Irish Times writes on the abortion subject. When she refers to TD Clare Daly on the fi...

In an RTE report on Radio1 this morning on the current US football visitors to Ireland, the reporter commented that many of them went to Mas...

Archbishop elect of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone is scheduled to be installed in the archdiocese on October 4, five days before his fi...

The archbishop elect of San Francisco's comments about his drunk driving episode are below. Had the archbishop not been apprehended wo...

It is often argued that Germany never forgets the damage that the inflation of the 1920s caused and is therefore permanently frightend of th...

The current Bishop of Limburg is in the news for all the wrong reasons these days. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-bishop...

The column below appears in this week's INM Irish regional newspapers. By Michael Commane I had an appointment in Tralee on Friday at...

On Gunther Jauch this evening journalist Wolfgang Herles made the comment that Angela Merkel really knew nothing about the Bonner Republik. ...

It has been announced that Archbishop Timothy Dolan is to give a 'blessing' at the upcoming Republican Party convention. This is a...