tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2001778610134453432025-12-23T20:09:57.898+00:00~ lacrimae in corde, in capite risūs ~The Thirsty Gargoylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07555762505933950270noreply@blogger.comBlogger696125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-43750878389435079092025-11-02T22:37:00.003+00:002025-11-02T22:37:43.308+00:00

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's once again time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. This is a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved -- and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known -- to make their way

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-10466962073134208582025-06-25T07:57:00.001+01:002025-11-02T20:09:04.849+00:00

There’s a line in the Aeneid where a heartbroken Aeneas steels himself to tell his shipwrecked compatriots that a time will come when they will look back with fondness on their misfortunes. 'My friends, this is not the first trouble we have known,’ he says in the West translation I read back in UCD thirty years ago. ‘We have suffered worse before, and this too will pass. God will see to it.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-68335938861868470052024-11-02T20:10:00.003+00:002025-11-02T21:06:16.951+00:00

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-31416286832836844072023-11-02T21:26:00.006+00:002023-11-10T06:52:24.225+00:00

Today being the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it, it's time to revisit my annual post where I remember those gone before me. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-4928895241123277782023-07-26T20:44:00.000+01:002023-07-26T20:44:01.731+01:00

Back in 2003 Toni Morrison met Peter Olson, the then CEO of Random House, at that year’s Book Expo America, and mentioned having watched a documentary on the Mongols in her hotel after a flight which had left her unsettled. Olson lit up. “I wrote my college thesis on an anti-Soviet revolt in South Central Asia,” he said, continuing, “I would contend that military histories are better for learning

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-15355114681013289162023-07-25T09:17:00.005+01:002023-07-25T12:27:41.964+01:00

I was at a conference in Rome a few years ago where people from Google explained that Catholic websites tend to punch well below their weight compared to those of other religious groups for the simple reason that they don’t link to other sites; in the digital environment as so often in the world at large today, Catholicism is a siloed landscape. It doesn’t have to be, though. Even just thinking

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-83994780225944047342023-07-17T15:16:00.009+01:002023-07-17T20:16:04.149+01:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about specialisation, about picking one area and being known for being great at one thing. I’m not sure about this, though, because to take a pointer from Archilochus, the world surely needs foxes as much as it needs hedgehogs. One of the great insights in medical practice over recent decades has been that for all the status that accords to consultants, general

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-71186486772908532942023-05-10T20:11:00.002+01:002023-05-10T20:11:17.455+01:00

It’s strange to read commentary on the Coronation when it wasn’t even on the radar for me on Saturday; a bit like missing the Biden visit and the indignant rantings about it from some elements of our neighbours’ fourth estate, I missed the Coronation entirely, as we had a First Holy Communion to celebrate in the family.It seems strange to have passed over so rare an event - the first in the my

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-60895566010699015952023-05-04T16:10:00.006+01:002023-05-10T16:18:57.978+01:00

I saw yesterday that this year’s Dublin Handelfest is being advertised, and perhaps unsurprisingly I felt that same ambivalent twinge of troubled anticipation I felt last year. The festival is great, with concerts and tours and exhibitions, but too often celebrations of Handel’s Dublin sojourn, like the city’s Georgian architecture or writers like Swift and Goldsmith, go hand-in-hand with

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-5042196698958274782023-04-17T19:35:00.007+01:002023-04-18T14:22:39.662+01:00

On the bus back from the airport yesterday I wasted the blue skies and glorious views that were surrounding me and would soon and suddenly be shrouded in an all-concealing fog by spending my time reading a frustrating essay from a few years back, a piece by Edward Feser who I used to rate, with a couple of decent books by him still on the shelves. Entitled 'Three questions for Catholic opponents

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-55592787067958769622023-04-09T10:57:00.002+01:002023-04-09T12:27:56.088+01:00

Days accumulate meanings as we age. Today would have been my mam’s birthday, were she still with us here, and so with me thinking of her anyway social media throws up recollections of birthdays past. The one from four years ago featured two photos, one from her youth, before she’d married Dad, and one from her time in the nursing home. Her eyes and smile were the same. I had no idea when I posted

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-29494246913025253052023-03-29T20:40:00.005+01:002023-04-09T11:29:23.496+01:00

The river Boyne is tidal outside our house, rising and falling as it ebbs and flows with the salty waters of the Irish Sea. The water can drop to a few inches at times, revealing wide gravel beds and even — to the eagle-eyed — the outlines of a few ancient oak canoes, sunk six thousand years ago when the great solar tomb of Newgrange was being built beyond the bend of the river, and now at risk

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-4278434435539627962023-03-23T13:18:00.011+00:002024-04-15T15:07:01.269+01:00

I'm not sure there's anywhere in the world that annoys me more than Ireland, but England surely runs it a close second. One of the strangest English delusions — we all have our national delusions, and I spend far too much time talking of Irish ones, so indulge me here — is the conviction that nationalism is a disease that afflicts other countries, and especially the emotional Celts. I'm not

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-53134707679263406412023-03-22T12:36:00.003+00:002023-03-22T12:45:29.622+00:00

I’ve used the ‘take a break’ function on Facebook for the first time today, not even knowing about it before this morning, reducing what I can see from someone I’ve considered a friend for years. Some things he did and then doubled down on some weeks ago left me feeling deeply betrayed and profoundly upset, and though I’m not angry with him, being reminded of it through Mr Zuckerberg's algorithms

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-1659876046785470322023-03-20T12:28:00.005+00:002023-03-22T12:30:30.603+00:00

Ten years ago today, in a London week that saw friends married, a clerical funeral, an emergency noctural visit to hospital, a shamefully late lunch rendezvous, and me turning down an ill-considered proposal to commentate on the papal installation Mass, I met up with someone I’d only known through Twitter at the recommendation of a mutual friend. It would be good, he said, if his two historian

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-60976325360529049132023-03-15T12:22:00.002+00:002023-03-22T12:26:33.114+00:00

There’s a passage in The Moviegoer where Walker Percy has the narrator muse on what he calls ‘certification’.‘Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighbourhood, the place is not certified for him,’ he observes. ‘More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighbourhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-55165683059810514652023-03-14T11:23:00.006+00:002023-03-22T12:44:31.315+00:00

Flicking through Herodotus over breakfast, as you do, it occurs to me again that it’s interesting how the first historian implicitly but clearly rejects the notion that history is written by the victors. ‘Winners?’ he effectively says time and again. ‘Maybe, but for how long?’Mind, this is something I often return to, and was at the heart of the thesis I eventually laid aside, albeit in the hope

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-5076839943077763372023-03-13T11:20:00.003+00:002023-03-22T11:22:30.293+00:00

 It’s strange to think it’s 27 years today since Krzysztof Kiéslowski died, leaving behind a marvellous, tender, profoundly humanising but all too small body of work; had he lived he’d only be 81 now, so imagine how much he could have blessed us with.“My message is 'Live more carefully',” he said once. “Because you don't know what the consequences of your actions may be. You don't know what

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-85875472114336839522023-03-12T11:14:00.007+00:002023-03-22T11:17:18.214+00:00

I’ve been wrestling recently with questions of means and ends, and whether desirable ends ever justify dodgy means. Discussions around this tend to get framed, I think, as a choice between failing while keeping your hands clean or succeeding while compromising your values. I’m not sure this is right, though, since in this scenario I think both options are failures, the main difference being that

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-10663264362947075912022-11-02T12:14:00.002+00:002023-03-23T13:20:54.972+00:00

 Today is the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards becoming who they were truly created to be.The word 'Purgatory' may not

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-3843658488466719832021-11-02T11:35:00.003+00:002021-11-02T11:41:15.254+00:00

Today is the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it. It's a special day in the Church calendar dedicated to trying to help those we've loved, and even those we've conspicuously failed to love, and so many who we've never known, to make their way towards God and towards becoming who they were truly created to be.The word 'Purgatory' may not

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-72632687627994531452021-03-09T19:16:00.008+00:002023-03-23T14:21:59.860+00:00

A frustrating article in The Irish Times by Nigel Biggar has driven me back to my files and something I'd written about three, three-and-a-half years ago; I attach it below.The latest piece is sheer sophistry, and historically dodgy sophistry at that. It takes real disingenuity — or laziness — to dismiss this speech as an example of President Higgins having drunk too deeply at the wells of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-74840071882779331472020-12-31T22:38:00.001+00:002021-01-01T02:57:28.857+00:00

 A long time ago, Mam said that she wanted me to speak at her funeral, when the time came. ‘I want you to talk,’ she said, ‘and to make everyone laugh.’ I don’t think I can promise that, and with most people joining us today doing so remotely I’ll probably never know, but here goes. Veronica – or Vera – Hynes was born in Liverpool in April 1939, just a few months before war broke out, the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-82620776906804986732020-11-02T12:18:00.007+00:002020-11-09T10:44:27.281+00:00

It being November, today is the feast of All Souls, or The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as my missal has it. Back in the day, when I was a Dominican, I wrote a blogpost in my private diary blog in which I mapped out some thoughts on purgatory, on All Souls, and most importantly on those I keep in my prayers. Sometimes I can forget people, so I thought it as well to call them

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200177861013445343.post-64145152403763815812019-10-10T15:01:00.001+01:002025-02-22T15:05:08.587+00:00

 “But we know by whom we were created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil,” wrote Fritz Hartnagel, a young German army officer on the Eastern Front, to his girlfriend Sophie Scholl in July 1943. “We must submit our reason to these mysteries, and confess the Faith,” he concluded at the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0