THERE are two Mother Teresas. The first is the Mother Teresa who appeals to fans of mushy Hollywood movies.

A RECENT Prime Time survey on the Church threw up an interesting but largely unreported statistic: compared to 90% of people who saw the role of doctors as very important, only 22% of people gave this rating to politicians, and journalists got a mere 20%.

IF the Catholic bishops feel discouraged by last week’s Prime Time survey, which shows that only 50% of the population now attends mass each week, they should remember that the Catholic church faces bigger challenges elsewhere.

PROFESSOR Niamh Brennan may feel vindicated. Her comment that she would be ‘reluctant’ to contact the gardaí if she was the victim of an assault, after news of her son’s mugging was leaked to The Star, has been followed within hours by another high-profile leak.

LAST night reality TV got real with the first of a four-part series called For Better or Worse. It’s all about divorce, and RTÉ publicists say it will ‘break one last taboo’ in Irish society by looking at the reality of marriage break-up through the eyes of some of the people directly involved.

IN THE early 1990s, a member of the Christian Brothers was watching television from his home in Western Canada. He tuned into live coverage of the Hughes Inquiry then underway in Newfoundland. The inquiry was investigating allegations of abuse by Christian Brothers in Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage.

IN March 1981, the Women’s Right to Choose movement organised a public meeting in Dublin’s Liberty Hall to push the case for legalised abortion in Ireland.

SOME years ago I found myself in RTÉ’s hospitality suite just after the recording of Questions and Answers. The Government minister who had appeared on the show arrived in, sat down, lit a cigarette and joined in an animated conversation. Some moments later a Dublin West TD — a prominent figure in the opposition who was also a guest on the show — arrived in. He appeared to give a double-take when he got the whiff of smoke, looked uncomfortable and left early.

A LITTLE information is a dangerous thing, and a little information is what was used to print the school league tables published last weekend.

ON the face of it, it’s a tempting proposal. Withdraw public money from fee-paying schools so the taxpayer no longer has to pay for their teachers’ salaries.