As each New Year dawns, we marvel at the passage of time. We take stock of our lives, and how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to travel. Time inevitably brings change. Yet few of us, as individuals, have changed nearly as much as this Irish nation in which we live.
Every Christmas, a concept at the heart of the season is the birth of Christ as Saviour. ‘Christ the Saviour is born’ we sing in the carol Silent Night; ‘Saviour’s Day’ warbled Cliff Richard and on Christmas night.
Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, often described as right-wing, seems to have struck up a molto simpatico friendship with the British PM Rishi Sunak. There was much hugging and embracing by the pair when both attended a festival of ideas in Italy last weekend. The word is that the chemistry between them is excellent. Personal…
We must strive for the common good of immigrants and citizens alike, writes David Quinn What is the right Christian approach to immigration? There is definitely one approach that is all wrong, which to simply close our borders and never ‘welcome the stranger’, to always say ‘there is no room at the inn’. But after…
The View Christmas is becoming two separate feasts: for Christians it is the feast of the Nativity, the time when we remember and celebrate the birth of the Christchild in Bethlehem, with all that followed right up to the moment of the crucifixion and the resurrection; for others it is an unidentified festival – a…
Notebook We won the county final. The rural parish where I’ve been based since 2022 took on the big urban city clubs in the biggest county in Ireland — and we won. It was some achievement for a tiny parish like ours. Some may wonder who is this “we”. I haven’t been known previously for…
Letter From Rome H.L. Mencken once famously quipped that love is like war, in that it’s easy to begin but very hard to stop. Had Mencken plied his journalistic trade in the internet age, he might well have added rumours to that list, which are notoriously easy these days to put into circulation and virtually…
Eduardo Campos Lima With an unprecedented rise in 2023 in the number of immigrants crossing Central America in an effort to reach the United States and Canada, the bishops of the region are urging local governments to establish adequate programs to deal with them and to ensure their safety. The migration crisis was the main…
The proposed amendments to the Constitution – to be made on the question of the family and the ‘woman in the home’ clause – are so bland and ambiguous that it’s possible not many voters will bestir themselves to vote in next March’s referendum. Less than a week after the Government announced the suggested new…
For the first time ever, this year some of my second level students queried whether we should be singing, ‘O Come Emmanuel, the great Advent hymn. The reason? It refers to Israel, and in particular, to ransoming captive Israel. Students politely explained that they do not support Israel’s action in Gaza and as a result,…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Nuala O’Loan
John L. Allen Jr.
Breda O'Brien