I am a pioneer! It is not that I am a trail blazer, entrepreneur or that I have discovered the previously undiscovered. No, I don’t drink alcohol and, since my teenaged years, I have been a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. It was an easy choice since both my parents were members as…
The View It was revealed on Monday that the Director of Public Prosecutions will not be pressing ahead with charges against those responsible for the care of ‘Grace’. The disabled woman known as Grace – not her real name – was placed in a foster home for 20 years in the south-east, even though there…
Deacon Frank Browne asks: Is the decline in priestly vocations a wakeup call to take the synodal pathway seriously? I have fond memories of student life in Clonliffe College, the Dublin Diocesan seminary in the early 1980s. There was hardly a vacant room with over 100 students. Most of my class were just out of school.…
There has been so much focus on James Joyce’s Ulysses – published on February 2, 1922 – that some readers and viewers of public media complain they’re being “force fed” Joyce’s famous oeuvre. And some find the depictions of masturbation, to say the least, unedifying. Well, Ulysses certainly was almost universally regarded as a ‘dirty…
We rebelled against the sexual constraints and hypocrisies of the past, but we cannot have it both ways, writes David Quinn In the United States a fellow who goes by the internet name of ‘West Elm Caleb’ has caused a sensation, with his case even being discussed on big talk shows. ‘Caleb’ (as we’ll call…
Last night, 80-year-old Sergio Mattarella was re-elected overwhelmingly as Italy’s President of the Republic, a result that triggered joy both inside parliament and in Italian streets. Mattarella is a widely beloved figure here, perhaps the most popular man in the country, someone who’s demonstrated both keen institutional judgment and also a remarkable ability to capture…
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gestures at a news conference after the first Cabinet meeting at Moncloa Palace in Madrid, 2020. Spain’s ruling coalition wants historic clerical sexual abuses to be investigated in the country, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said he will first meet with abuse victims. “We’re going to talk and…
Pornography is the biggest addiction in the world today, and by a wide margin. Mostly it afflicts men, but is also a growing addiction among women. Much of this of course is driven by its easy and free availability on the internet. Everyone now (not least our own young children) has immediate access to it…
Notebook I wonder how many priests in Ireland contracted Covid-19 during the pandemic? I wonder if this statistic has been recorded anywhere? We were often told that not all heroes wore capes; I wonder if some of them had collars? In each diocese, priests got plenty of advice and many directives about how to keep…
Shock and horror were expressed in high places. Indignant denials were issued. The establishment came forth to state that such a thing, were it to happen, would be outrageous. Such was the general reaction at Westminster to the claim by a former minister, Ms Nusrat Ghani, that she had been reprimanded for her “Muslimness”. Allegation…
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser