‘What is this Roncalli thing that they are talking about?’ ‘It’s a new thing. A fella said to me the other day he thought it was a new take away like Macari’s or Fuscardi’s, or maybe a pizza place, but it’s not, it’s something to do with the Church’. The Archbishop was asked could Roncalli be…
NOTE : In this month of November when we pray for our beloved dead sometimes hard questions come up. Yes, big questions like, where are they now? Are they in Purgatory? What is Heaven like? And so on. However sometimes these hard questions are more personal: Did he know how much I loved him? Did…
‘Tell us this Father, do you believe in ghosts?’ It was an interesting question and drew me back years ago to two encounters I had with ghosts, one very real, the other not so much. The first of these happened about forty years ago on a small back road outside Ballycastle in North Antrim. My brother and…
Do you remember that movie? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One of the great ‘spaghetti westerns’. I love it. I love it for the shooting. The silence. Of course I love Clint Eastwood, and no, I am not forgetting the music. Unforgettable, thanks to Ennio Morricone. I guess we are so used to the title…
I met Sinead about three months ago now, and even though I feel a bit strange telling ‘rumbling’ readers this, the truth is I haven’t really got over it. I suppose to say she was gorgeous is a real cliche, but I am trying to find words and, unusually for me, I am not having much…
Where do you look for Jesus? Or do you? I have recently been on pilgrimage and met a lot of people who are looking for Jesus. Actually I often meet people who are looking for Jesus…..now, having said that I am wondering is that correct? It is an interesting question, do we actively look for Jesus?…
Even the sound of the word has a ring to it. It sounds a serious business, which of course it is. ‘Get out of here you blasphemers!!’ What is a blasphemer? Somebody who blasphemes? Well yes, but what is that? What does it mean to blaspheme? Blasphemy is to insult or denigrate God or to show contempt of…
I guess in my head I knew that the business of reform was not going to be popular. However it is only in recent days that it has begun to dawn on me just how dirty a business it might be. As the launch of my reform initiative, The Roncalli Community, draws closer, efforts to…
There is a lot of talk these days about Church. Where’s it all going? What happened the Church of our childhood? Will there be a Church for our grandchildren? What will remain, if anything? There has been so much change. Surely the Church could not die? It might be better to get this last one out of the…
It must have been near midnight when I left her, but her last line kept ringing in my ears…. ‘you know Fr Joe I would love to get back to my boring old life’. In one way this was a strange thing to say but in another way it made a lot of sense. That said,…