The sense of Sunday still resonates deeply with Christians throughout this country and throughout the world, writes Julie Kavanagh A s a parish cantor, I have been one of the privileged few able to attend Mass on a Sunday throughout this pandemic. I don’t take that privilege lightly. I have experienced first-hand the loneliness of…
Assisted suicides present an unhelpful and dubious choice of relief or continuous pain, writes Fr SeánMacGiollarnáth, O. Carm. The Hippocratic tradition in medicine is under threat through the removal of traditional protections at the beginning and the end of human life. Law and medicine both reflect dominant tendencies and practices in culture and politics which…
The United States hosted the signing ceremony of the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Thursday last (October 22). The document rejects the claim that abortion is an international human right. “Today we put down a clear marker; no longer can UN agencies reinterpret and misinterpret agreed-upon language without accountability,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services…
It beggars belief that the same people who insist they want to protect vulnerable people from Covid-19 are now pushing assisted suicide, writes Niamh UíBhriain While everyone is distracted by the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Dáil deputies have moved forward a bill which would make it legal for doctors to help a person who is terminally-ill…
Two dioceses in central Vietnam hit by some of the worst floods in the country’s history are struggling to provide emergency aid for hundreds of thousands of victims, church officials said. The devastating floods caused by heavy rain that began two weeks ago and made worse by Tropical Storm Nangka last week have reportedly killed…
The president of Poland’s bishops’ conference has urged critics of a landmark abortion ruling to express their opposition “in a socially acceptable way” after protesters disrupted Sunday Masses. Archbishop Stanisław Gadecki issued the appeal on October 25, after the country’s constitutional court ruled that a law permitting abortion for foetal abnormalities was unconstitutional. In a…
Recent annual reports show that federal funding to Planned Parenthood has increased, despite efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate federal funding for the abortion provider over the last four years. One healthcare funding expert told CNA that without congressional action, new avenues of federal funding for abortion providers could soon be made available by…
The president of Focolare has accepted the resignations of the lay movement’s top leaders in France and announced the group will ask an independent committee to investigate how allegations of the sexual abuse of minors have been handled. “The task of this body will be to listen to the presumed victims and to gather further…
A Small Pslater by Padriag J. Daly (Scotus Press, €12.00; available from www.scotuspress.com) John F. Deane This new collection from Pádraig J. Daly has been eagerly waited for. Daly is a priest currently working in Dublin and he has published many collections of his poetry. The poems gathered here are excitingly new and move from an…
The president of the French bishops’ council for Catholic education expressed solidarity with the country’s school community following the beheading of a school teacher in an Islamist terror attack last week. “In these dark hours, Catholic education feels deeply united in solidarity with the whole school community…and first of all with the teachers,” Archbishop Laurent…