Mary Kenny, Author at Catholic Herald

Mary Kenny

‘Nightingale’ is a fitting name for London’s pandemic hospital

April 09, 2020

It’s surely right that the new emergency field hospital opened in London in the Excel Centre has been called “Nightingale”. Florence Nightingale is just about the most recognisable name in British medical history. “Nightingale” evokes a beautiful songbird, but Florence very nearly didn’t bear that surname at all. Her father’s family name had been “Shore”,

Our new habits: Piano lessons, smoking and Zoom

April 02, 2020

Any crisis or emergency brings out different personality traits in different individuals, and it’s interesting to observe family and friends all reacting in diverse ways to the present emergency. One young foodie friend has taken to rising at 5 a.m. to go “foraging” in wild places, collecting all sorts of plants and herbs to add

The response to coronavirus proves our elderly are loved after all

March 26, 2020

I have followed so many debates and discussions about assisted dying and euthanasia that I had almost begun to get the impression that there was a sort of death-wish among certain sectors of society. We looked with dismay at events in Belgium and the Netherlands where, it seemed, doctors were permitted to end life because

For pilgrims, it’s back to the Middle Ages

March 19, 2020

It’s been my way of life ever since the budget airline got going in the 1980s: virtually every month I have taken a flight – most often between England and Ireland. I have also taken planes, ferries, buses and coaches elsewhere. This way of life has now – quite suddenly, it seems – come to

There’s a silver lining to the cancellation of St Patrick’s Day parades

March 12, 2020

It’s St Patrick’s Day next week and many of the traditional events will be either cancelled or reduced, because of the Covid-19 situation. Street parades in Dublin and Cork have been called off. And I’ve heard some people in Ireland breathe a sigh of relief that Paddy’s Day will be a scaled-down event. In latter

Is this the moment Boris settles down?

March 05, 2020

What are we to make of the announcement that Boris Johnson is to become a father again this summer – the baby’s mother being Carrie Symonds, formerly described as his girlfriend, now his fiancée? Is the Prime Minister’s private life any of our business? Mr Johnson has never presented himself as a model of moral rectitude.

Harry and Meghan: would a clean break be better?

February 27, 2020

Some years ago, I met a talented young writer who said that she aspired to be a journalist – but she only wanted to be “halfway into journalism”. She’d like to keep the other half of her life for a different career. A veteran Fleet Street fashion editor overheard this and shook her head sagely:

Prosecutors in the dock

February 20, 2020

Domestic abuse is an odious crime which certainly calls for investigation and redress. However, there’s an aspect of this form of assault which our politically correct world doesn’t choose to admit: that is – a man hitting a woman is not the same as a woman hitting a man. The natural law has been erased

What my husband’s great grandfather and Phillip Schofield have in common

February 13, 2020

“Coming out” used to mean attending a debutante’s ball. Nowadays, as we know, it means a person announcing that their sexual orientation is gay or “non binary”. The television presenter Phillip Schofield has taken the ceremony of “coming out” one step further – by making the announcement on live television. He has been hailed as

Don’t leap to judgment on Harry and Meghan’s new venture

January 16, 2020

One of the mottoes I frequently heard in my youth was “handsome is as handsome does”: this is somewhat akin to the biblical words of wisdom “By their fruits ye shall know them”. It’s not what you say that counts – it’s what you do. The nuns were keen also on stressing that character was

The new Little Women would shock Louisa May Alcott

January 09, 2020

The latest film version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, has been a critical and popular success. It has a feminist message, surely, but an element of female empowerment was there, in the text. Jo March always was a strong female character, active and boyish – even masculine. In the book,

Timeless marital advice from the 1930s

January 02, 2020

Are there any menfolk out there whose 2020 New Year resolution includes a pledge to be a good husband? They would surely benefit from a little book first published in 1936 entitled just that: How to be a Good Husband. It is, predictably, in parts hilariously outdated. Don’t – it tells men – think you

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