Churches seem to be an afterthought in the post-pandemic world, writes David Quinn Parishes, like the country in general, will have to pray hard for mild weather this winter if they are to cope with the big rise in energy costs caused chiefly by the war in Ukraine. Fortunately, the Government has allocated additional support…
Sixty years on from the Cuban Missile Crisis, Pope’s plea for cool heads is timely, writes David Quinn It is 60 years ago this month since the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Older readers will remember the events of those fateful few weeks well. When the Cold…
Too many young men who father children do not play a proper role in raising their children, writes David Quinn Here are words uttered some years back in an address to a Church gathering by a major American politician: “We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times…
Parts of the world we barely think about have an importance we in Ireland don’t appreciate writes David Quinn One of the Pope’s fiercest critics is Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, the vast landlocked central Asian country which Pope Francis visited last week. Bishop Schneider’s criticisms of the Pope are often…
Many feminists also reject this worldview and see it as a threat, writes David Quinn Teacher Enoch Burke is in prison at the time of writing for contempt of court. Mr Burke is an evangelical Christian who refused to use the new gender pronoun and name of a pupil in his school in Co. Westmeath,…
The Pope wants the Church to fulfil the Christian mission to be a peacemaker, writes David Quinn Recently Ukraine’s Foreign Minister summoned the Holy See’s ambassador to Ukraine to appear before him after Pope Francis had angered the Ukrainian authorities by expressing sympathy for Darya Dugina, a political commentator in Russia who had been blown…
Pope Francis should appoint more cardinals from areas where Catholicism is growing rapidly, writes David Quinn Ireland has no cardinal of voting age, and given that Pope Francis is now 86 and in visibly declining health, it will probably mean that the Church in Ireland won’t have a representative at the conclave that will one…
The signs of the times can sometimes directly contradict the Church, writes David Quinn Throughout the history of Christianity there have been battles over what is true and false, right and wrong. These battles have often been fierce, and sometimes violent. In the early Church there were tremendous disputes over the doctrine of the Holy…
A vile act has prompted almost no debate at all about radical Islam and its threat to the values of the West, writes David Quinn Almost all societies have a concept of ‘blasphemy’, which broadly speaking means to mock the most deeply held beliefs and values of a society. Historically speaking, those beliefs and values…
Surrogacy and gender reassignment surgery are the scandals of modern Ireland, writes David Quinn Different times produce different sorts of scandals, and they are often the product of the particular set of values a given society has at a given moment. As we are now well aware, in the past babies were frequently taken away…