Some people enter a theatre of war and never see battle. I was in Paris last week, at the height of the reported violence, and witnessed nothing amiss. Wherever I went in central Paris, it was untroubled: the Etoile area, the Louvre, the Comedie-Française (playing to full houses), Montparnasse, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Latin Quarter,…
The impact of the Covid-19 lockdown will probably be with us for years: an increase in working from home, the development of more Zoom screen technology, and indeed, the streaming of Mass are among these observed. And now, another outcome is claimed: a record rise in the number of single women freezing their eggs, and…
This is the time of year – the summer solstice – when we usually see various homages to pagan Celtic Ireland, with druidic figures revering the turning of the seasons on the longest day. The remarkable Newgrange tomb – 5,200 years old – in the Boyne Valley becomes a focus for marking the solstice event.…
“I despise the Leaving Cert as an exam,” proclaims Ryan Tubridy. “I think it’s cruel and mean.” He says he despises the way that exams reduce books to bullet-points, while putting so much pressure on pupils and students. “There has to be a kinder way to test people’s knowledge.” Would it surprise Ryan to be…
When I was a young feminist, engaging in fiery discussions with the likes of June Levine, Nell McCafferty, Mary Robinson and Mairín de Burca, there was one principle on which we agreed: this was “the personal is political”. And furthermore, we affirmed that “everything is political”. We young leftists absolutely concurred that politics was part…
We spend so much of our active adult lives acquiring things: and then, in the senior years, we start to realise the need to discard so much of the stuff we have accumulated. Honestly, it’s taken me more than six months to clear out my Dublin flat (to move to a smaller abode). By the…
What are we to make of the appalling report from the Central Statistics Office that a quarter of adult women in Ireland have experienced sexual violence from a partner? “The online acceptance of casual relationships must surely be a risk factor” According to the Sexual Violence Survey 2022, over half of the victims had been…
When the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni met Pope Francis, commentators expected a clash of views. Ms Meloni’s right-wing party is strongly committed to halting excessive immigration to Italy, while the Pope has always emphasised the Gospel directive to welcome the stranger. And since his parents were immigrants to Argentina, perhaps he also identifies with…
The woman in the pew just behind me smiled pleasantly at the “sign of peace” and I returned her friendly greeting. I didn’t know her well, but had occasionally encountered her locally. Later, after Mass, she spoke to me some more. An attractive lady in her 60s, she had recently been widowed, after many decades…
The legendary French feminist Simone de Beauvoir has been removed from a list of female candidates to be honoured in sculpture at Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library. When it emerged that De Beauvoir, who died in 1986, was accused of grooming young female students as lovers – whom she apparently passed on to her veteran…