The Harry-and-Meghan saga rumbles on, and one reason for the attention it is given is that people see it as a focus for dissecting family relationships. Let’s face it: we all have complications within our family constellation. There may be a problematic uncle who seems to have let the side down. There is possibly a…
The View We enter the first month of the year with a number of uncertainties settled, at least for now. Brexit is happening at the end of the month, with doubt now centred on the short deadline of less than a year for negotiating a trade deal. The arrangements for maintaining the status quo on…
No-one can pretend that Ireland is not becoming a more dangerous place, writes David Quinn The growing savagery of violence that is taking place between drug gangs here in Ireland has shocked a public already exposed to seemingly endless murderous incidents between rival gangs fighting turf wars and ordering revenge killings. Ireland has a long…
Repeal activists are treating this election as a chance to finish off pro-life politics – to save it, pro-lifers need to canvass and vote for Aontú, writes Ben Conroy It’s important for the pro-life movement to have a presence in political life. In this election, Aontú surviving as a political entity will help that…
Questions of Faith All Catholics know that the first Pope was St Peter, but after his martyrdom, who succeeded him? While we’re not entirely sure who followed on from Peter, according to Church tradition, St Linus was the second bishop of Rome who reigned some time between 67-80AD. Multiple sources attest to this, the…
Letter from Rome At the beginning of last week, the insider Catholic universe imploded when news broke that retired Pope Benedict XVI and Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah had co-authored a new book defending priestly celibacy just as Pope Francis is considering an exception to the rule proposed during the Amazon synod. In the fierce and…
Catholic leaders in Germany have compiled responses from lay Catholics in areas related to who holds power in the Church, sexual morals, the role of priests and the place of women in church offices in preparation for an upcoming synodal assembly to debate Church reforms. More than 940 suggestions and questions had been submitted by…
Even with the best intentions, even with no malice inside us, even when we are faithful, we sometimes cannot not hurt each other. Our human situation is simply too complex at times for us not to wound each other. Here’s an example: Soren Kierkegaard, who spent his whole life trying to be scrupulously faithful to…
Notebook A question that arises for priests (outside of cities) concerns Sunday funerals. In particular, priests wonder if it is fair to transform a scheduled Sunday Mass into what becomes in effect a funeral Mass, with burial afterwards, often in the adjoining churchyard or a nearby cemetery. Ireland may well be the only country in…
We face a difficult series of commemorations, for sure, with the centenary of those troubled times between 1920 and 1923 – the War of Independence, the Black-and-Tan war, the disputed Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Civil War. Small wonder that our elders, our grandparents and parents, said so little about those times. There were aspirations of which…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Ben Conroy
Colm Fitzpatrick
Fr Ronald Rolheiser