Government plans for a referendum on abortion next year reveal consultation exercises as charades, members of the Oireachtas committee on the rights of unborn have said. Responding to reports that Health Minister Simon Harris has asked officials at the Department of Health to begin drafting legislation to allow for abortion on demand during the first…
During the pre-paration of 2013’s McAleese Report, Maynooth historian Dr Jacinta Prunty met with a panel where one of the men involved asked about shaving the girls’ heads, one of the actions most commonly linked in the popular mind with Ireland’s Magdalen Asylums. “All I could think was that they were constantly buying combs every…
New research debunks the sensationalist myths surrounding the Magdalen laundries in Ireland, a leading historian has claimed. Dr Jacinta Prunty, head of history at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, has painstakingly trawled the archives for a new book which aims to set the record straight. Dr Prunty says she hopes her new book –…
One of Ireland’s oldest priests, the last surviving child of any of the 1916 Rising’s executed leaders, has contested the official record of his father’s trial. Cmdt Michael Mallin, who headed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) rebels at St Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons during the Rising, was executed on May 8,…
Short sermons could be key to holding the attention of congregations and could even help draw families with young children back to church, a Derry priest has realised after a spell on American pews. After a sabbatical in Texas where he was encouraged to sit among the congregation to get a sense of how lay…
The prospect of a papal trip to the North still hangs in the balance, according to Archbishop Eamon Martin, who says efforts continue to encourage Pope Francis to cross the border if he comes to Dublin next year. Widely expected to visit Ireland next August in connection with the World Meeting of Families, the Pope…
“A hunger strike to death is a form of violence to one’s self and violence leads to violence,” wrote the then Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Hume, to Derry’s Archbishop Edward Daly in April 1981, prompting a heated debate in these islands’ Catholic newspapers. After Bobby Sands died the following month, Dr Daly observed that…
“Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” says Christopher West, quoting Bruce Springsteen and observing in an echo of St Augustine’s opening observation from the start of his Confessions that “we all have a deep ache and hunger in our hearts for something”. All set for a speaking tour of Ireland early next month, West, the best-known…
The dust hasn’t yet settled from the UK general election, and debate across Britain is febrile over the wisdom and propriety of Theresa May’s Conservatives placing themselves in debt to the DUP. Astonishingly and – one might think – irresponsibly, the controversy is but rarely over whether Britain’s governing party should be beholden to the…
Derry’s Bishop Donal McKeown has urged the North’s newly elected MPs to serve all those in Northern Ireland, calling them to focus their efforts on those most in need. “The politicians, whatever their party, have been elected to look after the people, especially the weakest, and it doesn’t matter what party they come from: that…