Irish bishops ignoring the issue of Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians would be a failure of leadership, writes David Quinn In 1998, the Catholic bishops of Ireland, England and Wales issued a now mostly forgotten document called One Bread One Body. Its main subject matter was inter-communion, that is, whether or not non-Catholic Christians could…
Irish media make it appear simple and humane to give intended parents automatic legal rights, but surrogacy is complex, writes David Quinn A campaign in favour of the rights of Irish people who use international surrogacy to have children has been substantially stepped up in the last couple of weeks. As usual, the ethical pitfalls…
Our population is boosted by young migrants, but we are still aging rapidly and declining sharply, writes David Quinn Last year, almost 4,000 fewer babies were born in Ireland than in 2019. This is partly a Covid-effect. Countries around the world have experienced a bigger than usual fall in their birth rates, presumably because of…
A strict religious life that is highly regimented does not fit well with modern tastes, writes David Quinn ‘Was Mother Teresa a cult leader?’, ran the headline in The New York Times last week, and with that began yet another attack on the Catholic saint. St Teresa of Kolkata, as she is now known within…
By helping to weaken the clan system, Catholicism helped to pave the way for individual freedoms , writes David Quinn Western societies are ‘WEIRD’, that is to say, compared with almost everyone else who has ever lived, and is still alive today, we are much more individualistic and, in a certain way, non-conformist. Counter-intuitively, the…
There is a good reason to treat marriage differently than other family situations, writes David Quinn In the Dáil last week, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar described the current definition of the family in the Constitution as “out-of-date”. This might surprise you. Didn’t we have a referendum on marriage in 2015 precisely to ‘modernise’ our view of…
For many people, their religious faith increased during Covid-19 restrictions, writes David Quinn We have been collectively living through the most unusual period of our lives since we went into the first lockdown in March of last year following the emergence in Wuhan, China, of Covid-19. Freedom All parts of life have been affected, including…
It’s hard for the schools to teach the Faith if all the parents want is ‘Catholic-lite’, writes David Quinn Your average Catholic school today is not, in fact, very Catholic at all. That statement needs a bit of unpacking. A Catholic school is, of course, officially Catholic in that it comes under the patronage of…
The chilling effect on free speech of moves to push legislation should be obvious, writes David Quinn The Government is aiming to pass a new law against so-called ‘hate crimes’. It looks certain to be passed because few voices have been raised in opposition to it. On the contrary, it seems to have general assent…
Sooner or later the hyper-individualism that exists in the West will burn itself out and the Church has to be ready to meet the disaffected, writes David Quinn A major new study published earlier this year showed a huge increase in the number of Irish people who say they never go to church. The study, called…