A ‘No, No’ on the two referendum proposals would be an appropriate response. My Seanad colleague Michael McDowell was right to refer to this choice of polling day as a ‘gimmick’. It might otherwise be harmless were it not that, in order to secure the vote for this date, the Government rushed, and effectively subverted, the normal…
Chaplaincy provides a “safe space” for prisoners to share concerns and worries, an inspector’s report for Mountjoy Female Prison has shown. The report also raised concerns about the fact that there was only one full-time chaplain available to the women. “The women welcomed the support provided by chaplaincy,” according to the Inspection report from the…
Lorraine Mulholland We know about saints’ lives through monks called hagiographers. Scholars say that you must bear in mind before you read the stories below, that hagiographers wrote about a saint’s way of life, rather than history as we know it today. One of St Brigid’s seven hagiographers, for example, was St Cogitosus, who wrote…
Last week, RTÉ published a video explaining the forthcoming March 8 referendum. It began with black and white imagery of women engaged in menial housekeeping tasks, while the female narrator stated: “Can you imagine a time when Irish family meant a woman having to give up her job to stay at home and mind the…
Pope Francis has expressed his closeness to the small Catholic community in Turkey after gunmen attacked a church during Sunday morning Mass January 28, leaving at least one worshipper dead. The shooting occurred just before noon at the Santa Maria church in the Sariyer district of Istanbul, and was reportedly carried out by two masked…
Focus Ireland have warned that despite the number of people in homelessness dropping in December, there was a 14% increase in homelessness over the last year. Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan said: “The fall in homelessness in December is very welcome and we hope this trend continues. However, it would be remiss of us not…
Religiously unaffiliated people, often referred to as “nones,” now make up the largest religious category in the US, according to a new report by the Pew Research Centre. Pew’s new report, released January 24, shows that nones now account for 28% of the total US population, outstripping the next largest group, Catholics, who make up 20%.…
We have a Government that does not like public debate going out of their control, writes David Quinn The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming’ was the name of a movie that came out in 1966. It was a spoof that played on American paranoia about Russia and communism. Of course, there was a…
Leaders of African nations have a “common bond” with Ireland due to the work of Irish missionaries, the Dáil has heard. There are leaders “all over Africa” who have been educated by Irish missionaries, which builds a “common bond that is really important”, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade and Defence was…
Letter from Rome It was an otherwise quiet day on March 15, 2008, when an unemployed 77-year-old Russian man walked unannounced and unaccompanied through the main entrance to the Basilica of St Francis in the hillside Italian city of Assisi, quietly hoping to mill around and soak in the atmosphere. Perhaps unfortunately for him, that…
Senator Ronan Mullen
Maria Steen
David Quinn
Ruadhán Jones
John L. Allen Jr.