A number of years ago I was giving a retreat to priests in the USA. Most of them had been born in Ireland and had spent all of their priesthood in various dioceses. They are what used to be known in the Church in America as FBIs (foreign born Irish), to distinguish them from those…

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…

The fact that RTÉ concealed additional payments to broadcaster, Ryan Tubridy, to the tune of €345,000 will undermine confidence still further in the public service broadcaster. In a disturbing article in the Sunday Independent, an anonymous whistleblower claims that Mr Tubridy’s salary is just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently, it is a dirty little…

The Oireachtas Special Committee on ‘Assisted Dying’ last week consulted three constitutional experts who attempted to shed light on whether or not the Oireachtas has the ability to introduce legislation that would see assisted suicide and/or euthanasia in Ireland. Dr Tom Hickey, Assistant Professor of Constitutional law at Dublin City University (DCU), told the committee…

The most important Irish story of last week was not the one involving Ryan Tubridy and RTÉ, nor the remarks from Michael D. Higgins about neutrality. Instead, it involved a new report on the way underage girls in the care of the State are being sexually exploited, abused and raped by ‘gangs of men’, something…

A terse two-line statement from the Vatican on June 15, announcing that Pope Francis has decided to send Archbishop Georg Gänswein back to his home diocese without any indication of a new assignment, has been widely interpreted as a papal rebuff to the 66-year-old German prelate. It is indeed striking that Francis didn’t bother with the…

Barb Fraze A bishop in north central India urged Catholics throughout the nation to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament for seven days to help end the worsening ethnic violence in Manipur, a state in the country’s northeast, bordering Myanmar. The situation “is worsening day by day in Manipur … it’s literally burning,” Bishop Chacko…

Dear Notebookers! I am not exactly sure who you are. Well, that is not altogether accurate, since I spoke with a priest friend in Raphoe last week with whom I had not been in contact for a while. “The only place I see you”, he told me “is on the back page of The Irish…

As most voters will know, the President of Ireland is a role that is supposedly above politics – whatever that phrase actually means. As has been noted, the practice of the president refraining from political commentary was more of a convention than a constitutional obligation, but in many ways it made sense. The president, the…