In barrister Marie O’Shea’s independent review of the abortion legislation, abortion is taken as an unqualified good. Therefore, anything standing in the way has to be removed. The three-day waiting period is framed as dispensable. And yet the review acknowledges elsewhere in a section on consent, that “there are risks that women may regret their…
Things we do every year are familiar, comforting and sometimes, numbing. Lent, Holy Week and Easter are supposed to remind us of the central, astonishing truth of Christianity – God loved us so much that he died for us. Even more astonishing, he then ended the dominion of death by rising. This ought to be…
It was great to see the plight of Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez brought to public attention by The Irish Catholic recently. The story arose from a parliamentary question posed by Carol Nolan, TD. Deputy Nolan does sterling work drawing attention to unpopular causes, along with many of her fellow Independent and minority party TDs. Nonetheless,…
Our new public holiday created to commemorate Imbolc/St Brigid has come and gone. In Leo Varadkar’s announcement last January, the emphasis was already clear. “This will be the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. It marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the equinox, the beginning of spring and the Celtic…
In the middle of head-wrecking controversies it’s welcome to come across a programme that front-loads positivity. The Leap of Faith (RTE, Friday) was well timed as the COP27 Climate Change Conference was drawing to a close. It was good to hear positivity and optimism in a new book The Parish as Oasis: An Introduction to…
The View The internet can be dark, distracting place but sometimes those clicks can lead us to a place of grace. Recently, I stumbled across the online columns of Warren Harbeck, who writes for the Cochrane Eagle weekly newspaper in Alberta, Canada. His mood chimed with mine. Harbeck was troubled by the war in Ukraine,…
The View It’s the media’s job to report bad news about the Church. For decades, they were too deferential. They should continue to highlight the truth about the Church, particularly the unpleasant truths. Yet it is not unreasonable to wish for some balance. It would be pleasant to occasionally see a good news story about people…
The View The diocese of Kildare and Leighlin recently announced a timeline for the introduction of lay-led liturgies and the introduction of what is called a “sustainable Mass schedule” by the first Sunday in Lent in February 2023. It is far from the first Irish diocese to announce such measures. Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare…
The View Funeral after funeral. That is how this summer has been for me — sudden deaths, accidents, and deaths that were a long time in coming but shocking, nonetheless. There were funerals of young people or young at heart people, interspersed with anniversary masses. Oddly, perhaps the most difficult funeral was the one I…
The overturn of Roe vs Wade is a great victory for the pro-life movement but it is also the start of a bigger battle. The considerable resources of the pro-choice movement, celebrities and influencers will all be marshalled. The singer Lizzo has pledged half a million to Planned Parenthood already and performers at Glastonbury have…