It was ill-judged of the Department of Housing to produce a video tutoring young people how to behave if they have to move back into the parental home. And rightly, it had to be withdrawn when it produced a stream of negative feedback – including rebounding on the young people who were featured on the…
It is hardly a contested statement to suggest that Donald Trump is not a universally-loved President of the United States. Polls carried out in Continental Europe show him to have very low likeability ratings: 77% of the French have an unfavourable view: 79% of the Germans, ditto. In Spain, his unfavourability rate rises to 80%…
The 30th anniversary of the 1995 divorce referendum has been recently commemorated, with, naturally, those opposed to divorce cast as the baddies. Yet it’s interesting to note how rare divorce or marital separation has been among Ireland’s political leaders. In a readable new book charting the lives and careers of the sixteen Irish Taoisigh over…
Historians, and the world in general, have been in agreement that Adolf Hitler was a bad man who committed heinous deeds. But now that his DNA has been analysed (from a scrap of fabric stained with his blood found in his bunker), there are fresh speculations as to whether his disabilities, rather than his choices,…
It’s ironic how the course of events sometimes unfolds, and how change often brings unintended consequences. When the contraceptive Pill was introduced in the 1960s, it prompted a huge debate about the ethics – and side-effects – involved. As everyone knows, this culminated in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI, against…
It was hardly unexpected that the Grand Masters of the Orange Order of Ireland, England and Scotland would protest to King Charles about his recent visit to Pope Leo – in their eyes committing the grave transgression of praying with the Pontiff. The Orangemen reprimanded the King for his ecumenical gesture, and rather impertinently directed…
It’s quite an achievement for a book to become a best-seller without any mainstream book reviews, and with little visibility in the bookshops. But Eoin Lenihan’s Vandalising Ireland reached the top of the best-seller list in non-fiction last weekend, sold almost entirely through Amazon (and published by Western Front, which specialises in a Christian worldview).…
Ever felt like cutting off all contact with your family? There’s a slew of self-help books currently published which encourage individuals to do just that. These bear such titles as ‘The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement, by Eamon Dolan; Surviving the Toxic Family by Marina Williams; Rules of Estrangement –…
Who would have predicted, in 1534, when Henry VIII broke with Rome, that 491 years later, Henry’s successor, Charles III, would embrace, and pray with, the successor to Clement VII, Pope Leo XIV? What a historic moment this meeting has been, and what reflections it prompts about the course of history. Consider the long years,…
I have sometimes been asked by people in Britain: why are the Irish the most passionately pro-Palestinian of any nation? Why has Gaza been so central, even obsessive, to Irish politics, discourse and public demonstration? Gaza has taken more time in the Oireachtas than any other issue touching overseas policy. It has been a central…