Yes Trad is best. We have to ask how come we got from then to where we are now. Including asking hard questions about Vatican 2. Surely the whole point of Vatican 2 was to make the Church a bigger draw? Whereas since Vatican 2 we went into a nose dive.
RTE news : Woman seriously injured after stabbing at Tramore church http://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0721/1584384-assault-tramore-waterford/ This happened in my diosese this morning, a woman stabbed in church while praying the rosary before Mass. I know this church, I know people from this town including a wonderful priest. Just shocking.
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/woman-50s-stabbed-during-mass-at-waterford-church-1929837.html According to this article the woman did not know the man and the attack may have been based on religion.
The attack appears to have happened on the altar so my guess is the woman was leading the rosary from the ambo when the man stabbed her.
I have learned that the poor woman was a local Legion of Mary member too. Please God she makes a good recovery.
Must have been a terrible experience for the poor woman, and those in the church too. It makes one more aware that we need to be mindful of those around us especially in places of prayer where we may be alone.
My cousin in Belfast works on Building Sites in an area of Belfast I grew up in. He says that when the men have finished their days work that go to the bar for a quick drink then head straight home and lock their front doors in for the night. He said it is now far ,far too dangerous to go outside in the streets at night. People are constantly mugging in order to get money for drugs. I remember my brother in the USA telling me years ago that when some of the drugs they had the in the USA reached Ireland we would have to go to live on the mountaintops. It reminds me of some of those old Dracula films that everyone rushed indoors before the Vampires got out of their coffins. A truly horrible way to live. But I think the drugs are not the problem. They are only the symptom of the problem. The problem is that folk have given up on God and the ten commandments. Now they live in hell.
I was in Belfast recently Padraig, near the Houben centre on the Crumlin road. I drove through streets around shankhill and it brought me back to hearing of places on the news during the troubles. I met some lovely genuine people in the area.
It must be very hard for Protestants without the Eucharist. Like walking about with no heart. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves". [1] (John 6:53)
It must be soul-destroying for them. All their privileged job opportunities, H & G, Shorts and so on, are long gone and, most discomfiting of all, they’re the minority community now. Rangers can’t even match Celtic anymore.
Reading St Augustine in The City of God , it must be a bit like the Fall of the city of Rome and their Empire. Or the Fall of Constantinople to Byzantium. The End of the World. But the World goes on regardless.
