Jack of many trades, master of some. Editor, @leavenmag, '1916: The Church & the Rising'. Author, 'Cannae: The Experience of Battle'. Multiple CMA award winner.
Feb 22 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Some context, as it's important to remember what she and the White Rose opposed: "Nothing is so unworthy of a nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by a clique that has yielded to base instinct…Western civilization must defend itself against fascism..." /1
"Imagine the extent of the disgrace that will come upon us and our children when the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrific crimes that exceed all measure come to light." That's from the first White Rose leaflet, which you can read here: /2weisse-rose-stiftung.de/widerstandsgru…
Sep 26, 2023 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
This - by the Church of England - is the kind of thinking that is desperately needed in the Church in Ireland, where we’re currently having a year of vocations defined mainly by attempts to harvest where we have not sown and at best where we’ve sown but not tended. /1
Naming things - diagnosing them properly and telling the truth about them - is a fundamental human vocations, communicated right at the start of Genesis. And yet so often we fear to do the latter, a vain ‘Bella figura’ mentality corrupting our will. /2
Jun 14, 2023 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
The more I read - and I've read a fair few theses and dozens upon dozens of articles since penning a 20,000-word rant on the subject a couple of weeks back - the more I become convinced of a few central facts in Ireland's catechetical collapse since the 1960s. /1
Content is necessary, but not sufficient; however, at least in terms of formal school-based religious education we've gone from thinking content both necessary and sufficient to thinking of it as neither necessary nor sufficient. /2
Feb 6, 2023 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
So, sparked by this excellent little thread by @kenanmalik, I thought I'd take a little skim of Nigel Biggar's new defence of British imperialism, just with a view to his comments on Britain's first and most protracted conquest: Ireland. He pays it remarkably little attention. /1
So, he starts with a Norman foothold in the 12th century, plantations in Munster and Ulster in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and - in a footnote - the abolition of Ireland's parliament in 1801 to reduce the influence of Protestant landlords. /2
Jan 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I think this might be the worst example of Catholic journalism - in a crowded field - since folk leapt on the Viganò nonsense a few years ago. The Herald is just recycling Church Militant which recycles this Italian site - newdailycompass.com/en/about-us - which recycles a blog. /1
The blog in question - the sole source for this story - is a pseudonymous collective blog, with pieces by ‘Virtelius Temerarius’ and other made-up names, and claims to have thirty eyewitness testimonies, none of these contradicting each other in even the smallest of ways. /2
