Category: Ireland

Exotic Escapes And Ordinary Days

Summertime. The beaches are calling, and the exotic places of Earth are waiting for me to take a selfie with them. This is the season when we carve out time to put ordinary life on hold, put to-do lists in time out, and let responsibilities rest. For a few days, or a couple of weeks if we can get them, we are free.

…until it’s time to go home and return to ordinary days full of ordinary people and ordinary jobs and food and conversations about traffic and plans for the next holiday. Holidays can be so nice that they can tempt us to see the months and weeks of regular work in between as just a preparation for our next chance to get away. But what if all of this ordinary stuff in between is more than just a savings plan for another escape? What if it’s actually our life? And what are we missing by wishing it away?

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Ireland’s Treasure: The Book Of Kells

Recently Munster Bible College had a week-long intensive course in early church history. There’s a lot to cover in a course like that, but by Friday evening we were talking about the gospel coming to Ireland through Patrick. What a man. He lived and breathed Scripture, which comes through in his surviving writings and his willingness to leave a comfortable life and sacrifice everything for the sake of the very people who had kidnapped and enslaved him in his youth. You could hardly get a better picture of the gospel of Jesus, who stepped out of Heaven to sacrifice everything for the sake of the very people who had rejected him. Continue reading Ireland’s Treasure: The Book Of Kells

My Children’s Childhood Is Not Like Mine

Last year on our flight to America, my boys were looking forward to the Pac-Man knockoff game on the in-flight entertainment system before we even boarded. My daughter remembered which movies she had watched two flights before. She had just turned six, and was about to take her fourth trip over the Atlantic.

This was not my childhood.

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Don’t Assume You Don’t Assume

When groups of people live together on the same piece of earth, we have to learn how to get along. Granted, we’re often not very good at it, but even if we spend a lot of time arguing, we still need each other and depend on each other quite a bit more than we’d usually like to admit. And that’s not all: we also influence each other quite a bit more than we’d usually like to admit. Oddly enough, you can even see this in what we choose to argue about and the arguments that we use.

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How Ireland Has Changed Me

Ten years ago today, I got on an airplane in Washington DC with my pregnant wife and one year old son, and we all left the only country we’d ever lived in. The airport was busy with people heading the other direction: it was Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day, 2009. A couple of meals and movies later, we landed in Ireland. We were met at the airport by coworkers, and on the way home we stopped at Pizza Hut. During the meal, my wife noticed that we had left the diaper bag in the trunk. No problem, our coworker was happy to get the nappy bag out of the boot. We looked at each other and knew: it might be Pizza Hut, but it was definitely not America!

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Good Discrimination, Bad Diversity, and Pneumonia

There was a time last year when my lungs started going on strike. Every breath became a rattling effort, and time only seemed to make it worse. So, like any sane person who can’t breath, I went to the doctor. She told me I had pneumonia, but was quick to add that she was very accepting of my unique breathing style and would support me in my new lifestyle. Then she sent me home.

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Health Committee Doesn’t Mind A Bit Of Suffering

Through much of her history, Ireland has been well acquainted with the reality of pain and suffering. Yet one of the beautiful things about this nation is that in the face of her own pain, she responded by growing stronger in her compassion for others who are in need. Her willingness to stand up for people and animals who face pain and suffering at the hands of others is well established – which makes her government’s decision last week to allow intense pain for some living beings on her very own shores hard to understand.

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A Christian Perspective On The Blasphemy Referendum

This is a guest post written by Jonny Grant, pastor of Carrigaline Baptist Church

This coming Friday, the 26th October, we will have the opportunity to re-elect or vote for a new President. On the same day we, the citizens of Ireland, are being asked to vote on a proposal to change the Constitution of Ireland in relation to the issue of blasphemy.
At present, the Constitution says that publishing or saying something blasphemous is an offence punishable under law. Article 40.6.1 in full says:

The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality:
i) The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions. The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law. Continue reading A Christian Perspective On The Blasphemy Referendum

Forgiveness, Repentance, & The Pope

Last weekend Pope Francis was in Ireland for the World Meeting Of Families. With such a title, it’s no surprise that the Pope took every opportunity to encourage and emphasise the importance of the family. But if you only saw the news, you’ll wonder what families had to do with it, because the media and internet were only interested in the Pope’s words as far as he addressed the terrible abuses of Catholic power in Ireland.

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Is Ireland Free?

There is a dispute opening up in Ireland between the government and Catholic hospitals, who have recently said they have a moral objection to performing abortions. The government, who is working now to legislate for abortion, has responded that hospitals who receive public funds must follow the law of the land, and that only individuals can be recognized as having the ability to hold conscientious objections. In saying this, the government seems to have forgotten that hospitals are not merely buildings full of inhuman healing machines, but are rather associated groups of individuals – individuals who do in fact hold moral beliefs. The government has also ignored the precedent set in 44 States in America, the American Medical Association, and a 2010 resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stating that “No person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion.”

Continue reading Is Ireland Free?