We need a Green “Bread, not Bombs”

A rallying cry heard throughout the 20th century was “Bread, not bombs.” The original phrase captured the moral demand to prioritise human need over militarism, often in Cold War and anti-poverty contexts. But in the face of climate collapse, biodiversity breakdown, ecological injustice, and environmental racism, a reframing is badly needed. The drums of war… Read more »

Connecting and reflecting

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 »

The Agrarian Localists: Poets, Scientists, and Activists

As we accelerate towards climate chaos, more and more people are looking to ramp off the globalist superhighway and make their way through life more slowly and simply on winding localist trails.

Formed by More Than Algorithms: Why theology needs to care about democracy in a digital age

Next week, I will be presenting at a gathering of theologians, ethicists, and social scientists in Salzburg, Austria. The event, organised by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns, and its focus is democracy. Or more precisely, democracy under threat. For many years now, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has affirmed democracy as the… Read more »

Conviviality in the Community Garden

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 »

Warehousing Addiction

All our prisons are doing is “warehousing” drug users and releasing them again, thereby ensuring that many will return to using drugs and back into prison. 

“Crimes” of the Future

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.

Pope Francis smiling and blessing a child

In Memory of an Unlikely Pope

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 »

The Politics of Proximity (on Easter Saturday)

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 »

News  

Loving the place we are in

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 »

News