Mary Kenny, Author at Catholic Herald

Mary Kenny

Ireland is still an intimate, close-knit society, despite the changes over the last few years

August 01, 2023

‘Mind you – I’ve said nothing’, says Mary Kenny. In 1953, the satirical writer and novelist Honor Tracy published a book about Ireland called “Mind You – I’ve Said Nothing!” It caused uproar: the Englishwoman had insulted just about every sacred value in Irish life, notably the Catholic Church, Irish nationalism, the Irish language and

Paul Johnson 1928-2023

April 17, 2023

As a young journalist, I remember listening to the legendary Paul Johnson at El Vino, Fleet Street’s famed tavern. Paul dispensed merry wisdom, often alongside Peregrine Worsthorne and Alan Watkins – leading scribes of the day. I was awestruck by the brilliant conversation: it seemed like being in the company of his 18th-century namesake, Dr

The last heroines of Britain’s greatest generation

October 22, 2021

Mary Kenny reviews Women in the War  by Lucy Fisher,  with a foreword by Baroness Boothroyd

Reading, writing, rebellion

April 01, 2021

For a century, modern Irish Catholic writers have pushed against their faith  – and yet drawn on it, too

A pro-life surge in US politics

December 02, 2020

In the US Senate, six pro-life women will serve for the incoming Congress (with a possible seventh, if Kelly Loeffler from Georgia wins a run-off in a second voting round in early January).

In the internet age, long-held social values can change overnight

November 22, 2020

Are you baffled by the modern world and its alarming transformation of values? I certainly am, but now I’m reading a book which explains so much of what is going on. Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity was published to acclaim last year, and this autumn it came out in paperback.

Irish politicians used to live in fear of bishops. Today it’s the reverse

October 09, 2020

For many years, my aunt Maureen was the organist at a very pretty church in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock (famous now as Samuel Beckett’s birthplace). Our Lady of Perpetual Succour has an attractive Italian-type campanile, and is very fine stonework. And so, on a mild autumn weekday in September, I decided to go there

A grandchild shortage will soon be upon us

September 15, 2020

The actress Hilary Swank has said that a woman can be maternal without being a mother – she’s 46 and doesn’t have children – and I totally agree with her. No female educated in convent school harbours the notion that women can only be fulfilled by biological motherhood. Every convent schoolgirl has known nuns who

Would Hollywood be fair to Phyllis Schlafly? No chance

August 21, 2020

Phyllis Schlafly was a Catholic mother of six children who campaigned against the American Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s. So it was a racing certainty that she would be portrayed, in a TV mini-series, as a smarmy hypocrite. And that’s how Cate Blanchett plays her, in Mrs America, currently showing on BBC Two

Without Lourdes, Grace Kelly might never have become Monaco’s Princess

July 24, 2020

Critical scorn has been poured on a three-part BBC documentary about the principality of Monaco (Monaco – Playground of the Rich, now available on iPlayer). It’s been widely described as a tedious portrait of silly rich people talking drivel. Monaco – once also known as Monte-Carlo – has always attracted a certain amount of disparagement.

It’s getting harder to deny the differences between men and women

July 01, 2020

For some years now, equality between the sexes – or “genders” as we now often say – has been such a strongly held orthodoxy that few dare to challenge it. I am all for equality before the law for everyone, but I don’t believe “equality” should obscure the fact that there are fundamental differences between

I was impatient for lockdown to end, but now I’m used to it

May 26, 2020

At the start of what we now call the lockdown, in mid-March (I date it from around St Patrick’s Day, March 17, when all festivities were cancelled) I was inclined to feel rebellious against these restraints on our lives. I disliked not being able to take a train, bus or plane; finding churches closed; seeing

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