Extremist politics is on the rise on both left and right in Europe and America. We have just witnessed a far-right rally take place in Charlottesville, Virginia, with members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis taking part. They clashed violently with members of Antifa, a far-left group. One of the far-right demonstrators ploughed his…
We’re in something of a Catch-22 situation here. If you draw attention to sacrilege you might end up playing into the hands of the sacrilegious. They’re looking for attention. If you pay no attention to it at all, you could give the impression that you don’t really care when the sacred objects of your religion…
Very few readers of The Irish Catholic will be watching season three of Twin Peaks, I suspect. It’s not on one of the main channels and it has only a cult following because its content is too surreal for most tastes. But in one recent episode we were taken back to the first test of…
Discussing the latest census data released last week, RTÉ’s George Lee said with a smile on his face that they show “people are still interested in each other but maybe in a more fluid way than the traditional way”. What did he mean? Simply this: the family based on marriage is not as strong as…
Alcohol sales are restricted in Ireland in all sorts of ways. For example, an off-licence cannot sell alcohol before 10.30am from Monday to Saturday, or before 12.30pm on a Sunday, and never after 10pm. Pubs must close after a certain hour. ‘Happy Hour’ – selling alcohol at a reduced price during a certain time of…
By the time you read this, Charlie Gard, a baby born almost one year ago, may already be dead. Charlie was born with an extremely rare condition that causes progressive muscle weakness, including of the heart, and brain damage. He has been on life-support for months and at the time of writing his medical team…
Des Hanafin will have been an extremely familiar figure to many of the readers of this newspaper down the years. He was a long-serving Fianna Fáil Senator and a founder and the long-time Chairman of the Pro-Life Campaign. Des died last week, aged 85. He had been unwell for a long time but was still…
Political rhetoric is becoming more and more divisive, more and more extreme. Mere disagreement is becoming rarer. What’s become commonplace is hurling anathema at those you disagree with. It’s not merely that a person is wrong, it’s that they must be wicked because they are wrong. In the field of religion, intense disagreements, sometimes turning…
The report into the country’s mother and baby homes is due out next February. I think that points very strongly to an abortion referendumwithin weeks of that, in other words in March or April of next year. The Government won’t want public anger at the mother and baby homes to go to waste. Those who…
World Meeting of Families must proclaim the truth with charity and clarity, writes David Quinn Every moral act has two main components, the objective and the subjective. Here’s an example. If someone steals, what they have done is wrong. The act of stealing is wrong in itself, objectively wrong. But the person might be starving.…