In October 2022, two young people from the environmental activist group, Just Stop Oil, walked into the National Gallery in London carrying tins of soup. They opened one tin and hurled it over the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting Sunflowers. The painting itself was unharmed. The seventeenth-century Italian frame was splashed. It needed some… Read more »
Every August and September, the housing shortage shows up on campus. First year students move across the country without certainty about where they will sleep. Returning students juggle long commutes, term-time sublets, and rising rents. Parents bounce desperate messages into WhatsApp groups looking for leads. This is now a familiar seasonal pattern, yet it points… Read more »
Irish country-pop singer, CMAT, recently released a new song “Euro-Country” in which she depicts life in Ireland since the Celtic Tiger and the Crash. The song is beautiful and haunting, reminding us of the legacy of the Boom and the Bust-era and how it, to this day, has its grip on every aspect of our lives.… Read more »
If you do a search for the word ‘local’ in Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ letter on the care of our common home, you will discover that the document is peppered with references to all sorts of local concerns, actors and solutions.
It’s been almost six months since I’ve been welcomed onto the JCFJ team, so I thought I would report on some of the highlights in what has been an intense time of learning, reflection, challenge, and connection. As well as helping the team with environment-related submissions, assisting with our publication Working Notes, and promoting my… Read more »
On Wednesday evening I took part in a Hedgerows Cycle in Dublin 12 to mark National Biodiversity Week 2025. Funded by the Irish Environmental Network and co-organised by Dublin Cycling Campaign and Hedgerows Ireland, the event aimed to celebrate the biodiversity benefits of hedgerows, showcase some of the area’s hedgerows, and explore how hedges can… Read more »
If a more populist right Government, than the incumbent coalition, were to emerge in Ireland, then they have an arsenal of tools to further suppress peaceful democratic protest and respond punitively to protestors.
A Presbyterian Appreciation of Pope Francis Sometimes people ask me how I ended up directing a Jesuit social research centre, as a Presbyterian theologian. At this stage, the polite answer rolls out of my mouth with barely any thinking required. But if I was to tell the truth, I would have to say that it… Read more »
Today is the day between. Not death, not resurrection — just silence. Easter Saturday stretches out as a long pause in the Christian imagination: a space of absence, of waiting, of unknowing. It is a day we are not good at inhabiting. We prefer the drama of the Cross or the joy of the empty… Read more »
Watching the news is very tough at the moment. In this time of manufactured chaos, it’s so easy to think that individuals or communities have no power to change things. But instead of giving in to despair or apathy, we can find consolation in all the work that is happening, often by volunteers, to make… Read more »
Working Notes is a journal published by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. The journal focuses on social, economic and theological analysis of Irish society. It has been produced since 1987.
