The willingness to take great physical risks is inspirational, writes David Quinn People love their heroes. Heroes are always the best in their field. During the World Cup, countries looked to the heroes in their squads. For Portugal it was Cristiano Ronaldo. For Argentina it was Lionel Messi. For Croatia it was Luka Modric.…
It could take years before we know if the papal trip has been a success, writes David Quinn And so, all 500,000 tickets available for the Pope’s Mass in Phoenix Park next month have been taken up. That is an impressive number by any reckoning, and especially in today’s very secular climate. An additional…
An inauthentic Church peddles ‘cheap grace’, writes David Quinn In any given society and cultural moment, Christianity faces certain temptations. In part of Eastern Europe, for example, Christianity is coming to be identified again with national identity. This happened in the run-up to World War I and World War II, with disastrous consequences. In…
Even the right to baptise your child is now being questioned, writes David Quinn We are definitely in a radically new cultural moment when even the practice of infant baptism is called into question and by no less a person than our former president, Mary McAleese. If the right of Catholics to baptise their…
Catholic hospitals must stand their ground on abortion, writes David Quinn In the Dáil last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed that Catholic hospitals will have to perform abortions under the terms of the upcoming abortion law. Let that sink in for a moment. Very few countries require such a thing because they know abortion…
If the Church tries to be too accommodating of cultural Catholicism, it starts to lack coherence, writes David Quinn In Ireland, most people still seem content to call themselves ‘Catholic’. Census data for 2016 put the figure at 78%. The RTÉ exit poll on the day of the abortion referendum came up with a…
A double standard lies at the heart of reaction to the adoption scandal, writes David Quinn In November 2016, ITV aired a programme called Breaking the Silence: Britain’s Adoption Scandal. It interviewed seven women who became pregnant decades ago while unmarried and were forced by the state, the churches, their families and their GPs…
True compassion helps someone carry their burden until the time hopefully comes when it doesn’t feel like a burden anymore, writes David Quinn A friend who is good at number-crunching tells me that 37% of weekly Mass-goers voted for abortion on May 25. He gleaned that figure from exit poll data. It is a horrifying…
Ireland is facing the most momentous vote in its history, writes David Quinn These are the closing days of a referendum debate on the most momentous vote ever to face the Irish people; do we believe that unborn members of the human family have a right to life or not? It is not at…
The referendum is in reality about abortion on demand, writes David Quinn This abortion referendum is not primarily about the hard cases such as rape and ‘fatal foetal abnormality’. Under the planned law, the vast majority of abortions will take place on the healthy babies or healthy women. That is what we are really…