Separating sex and love has been a disaster for men and women, writes David Quinn Even Freud believed a certain amount of repression of our instincts was necessary to civilisation. Freud was the ‘patron saint’ of anti-repression but he saw that a certain amount of repression, or to put it another way, of ‘civilised…
Many Protestants and Catholics have found common cause in fighting for fundamental rights, the Pope should encourage this writes David Quinn Short of some unforeseen development, Pope Francis will be here next August for the World Meeting of Families. Everything he says and does will totally overshadow everything else that takes place at the…
Various experts have been appearing before the Oireachtas Committee that is considering what wording to put before the Irish people in next year’s abortion referendum. Much of the focus on the hearings to date has been on their alleged bias. More on this anon, what is far more important is what was said last week…
Today’s Fine Gael would have no place for its 1970s Taoiseach, writes David Quinn Liam Cosgrave is the first Taoiseach I can remember. My father, a newspaper man like his father before him and his son now, was thrilled. My father was Fine Gael through and through and Cosgrave’s was the first Fine Gael-led…
Aid to the Church in Need is one of the most important organisations working in the Church today because one of the needs it meets is particularly keen, namely saving the Christians of the Middle East from extinction. This is a forgotten story. Most times it is one that is never even told, not by…
Has Education Minister, Richard Bruton, yet said something that is friendly and supportive of the role and place of faith schools in Irish society? Much of the time Minister Bruton sounds like a spokesman for Equate, the pressure group that campaigns against the rights of faith schools in the name of ‘equality’. Minister Bruton gives…
Those of a liberal persuasion tend to congratulate themselves on the changes that have taken place in Irish society over the last few decades as we have become more ‘tolerant’, more ‘compassionate’, more ‘open-minded’ and more ‘mature’. They like to remind us of ‘how far we have come’ compared with the Ireland of say, the…
It’s fairly fashionable now for people to describe themselves as “spiritual not religious”, but what does it mean when they say that? It certainly signifies an aversion to being called ‘religious’. To be ‘religious’ has connotations of being a ‘Holy Joe’, or of being ‘dogmatic’, or being regimented and of being unwilling to think for…
A huge inquiry into child abuse at the hands of various institutions, both Church and secular, has been underway in Australia for some time now. It is taking place under the auspices of a body called the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Despite the fact that it is investigating a range…
We often like to flatter ourselves that if we lived under conditions of persecution for our faith we would have the resilience and courage to risk persecution in order to stand by what we believe. I wonder if this is true though? In much of the world, Christians are savagely persecuted for their faith, and…