Ethos

25th May 2020

We’re asking you to ‘Click-4-Crumlin‘ to help our TY students raise money for a covid-19 testing machine for sick children in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin. Due to the current restrictions, the annual Duck Push in its traditional form, unfortunately, cannot take place. Undeterred, our TY students have come together to launch an online Duck…read article

20th May 2020

In my 3rd motu proprio at the end of March I asked if anyone had a favourite tree – and received a great and varied response – with many reasons for the relationship. If you thought that my question was strange then – try this one now: Do you have a Braveheart Tree ?! I…read article

13th May 2020

Last Friday, the well-leaked news that this year’s Leaving Cert. was to be cancelled made it a unique day in the annals of the DES – and in the life of Rhetoric’20. Amid all the media frenzy and the rumours – a final (?!) and definitive (?!) Plan C brought to an end the agony…read article

5th May 2020

It is just over 50 days since the anti-covid-19 strategy brought about the closure of places of gathering. After the initial shock, people began to improvise – and everywhere there was surprise at how well this was succeeding. There was joy at values, for so long forgotten [or taken for granted] – were now coming…read article

29th April 2020

One hears a lot these days about people, unable to put up with the current anti-covid lockdown – wanting to leave their “prison-space” and head away beyond the imposed 2 kms from home. There is a well-known story of two men fleeing their fear-imposed lockdown. It is told in last Sunday’s Gospel in  St Luke’s…read article

21st April 2020

They all lived together and shared everything in common ……. [Acts 2:44] The first reading of last Sunday’s Mass describes the first Christians – after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – living together and  sharing everything in common – and recognized as associates of Christ [Acts 4:13] Future generations reading that line…read article

14th April 2020

My Little Friend Anne Marie’s Alleluia! I first met little Anne Marie on this very Easter Monday – 8th April 1985. I was on my first of nearly 20 visits to Lourdes with the Irish Children’s Pilgrimage. She was about 10 or 11 – and, like others with Down’s Syndrome, she was affectionate, tactile, generous…read article

7th April 2020

The other day I saw in a newspaper a photograph of a very busy Grafton Street – it looked a scene from the shop-till-you-drop Christmas shopping madness.  There was a caption underneath with the following three questions: When can we expect normality to return ? When our freedom returns, will it be by degrees –…read article

1st April 2020

A strange question, perhaps – but I hope it may make you think back for a moment and see that special tree in your mind’s eye. I am lucky that – even in these times of lockdown – I don’t have to go very far to actually see mine! I pass it several times a…read article

27th March 2020

Some years ago I spent a few weeks helping out in a parish in the middle of Paris. One morning I switched on to Radio Notre-Dame the station run by the Archdiocese.  The speaker asked a question: “Why do we all love to go to a night club?” He had my attention right away. He…read article