This poem was penned after the death of King Charles I, who was beheaded outside Whitehall Palace in London on the afternoon of January 30th, 1649, exactly 368 years ago, today. 

"He nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene:

But with his keener eye

The axe’s…

“NEW YORK CATHOLICS: Faith, Attitude & The Works!”

Patrick McNamara

Orbis Books, October 2014

211 Pages

When I first saw the title, I was apprehensive -- I was expecting either a dry history or a dry listing of…

“Mo Gobnat from Muscraige Mitaine, i.e. a sharp-beaked nun,

Ernaide is the name of the place in which she is.

Or Gobnat of Bairnech in Món Mór in the south of Ireland,

and of the race of Conaire she is; a virgin of Conaire’s race”

Note to the Félire Óengusso, tr. Whitley Stokes, p. 73

I have a new…

The Healy family is an interesting Irish-American and and African-American family.  I did the following book review a couple of years back:

Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920

by James M. O’Toole

Reviewed by John Edward “Ed” Murphy

I first learned of the Healy family in January 1959, when I paged…

By Michael Hogan, Ph.D.

Historian from Guadalajara, Jalisco, México

John Riley, the twenty-eight year-old Irishman who is credited with organizing the San Patricio Battalion during the Mexican War, has been the subject of much…

Things that have started running through my mind, such as why so many people have started to bash Gabriel Byrne so harshly. Bash him over what his thoughts are over the Catholic Church. Which indeed Mr. Byrne is right about in terms of the fact that, the Catholic Church is as a whole, a corrupted institution no?! The Catholic Church indeed remains a corrupt institution--I mean if one looks at things like "The Tudors," "The Borgias," "Pillars of the Earth," or indeed even the current…