Members of the British royal family are not supposed to get involved in anything political or controversial: but Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, has pointedly supported current campaigns protesting about violence against women. She sent flowers, and tweeted about the horrific murder of the primary schoolteacher, Sabina Nessa, and attended a huge protest about the killing…

The View Quite suddenly it seems to me that we are moving very rapidly towards Christmas – it is just 12 weeks away and the shops are already beginning to offer Christmas decorations and presents! I was pondering on how rapidly time has passed in this strange coronavirus half-world which we have been inhabiting –…

The pandemic has allowed people to reflect on what really matters to them in life, writes David Quinn The pandemic has impacted different groups in different ways. I am not referring to the direct effect of the disease itself, but of lockdown and other restrictions imposed to ensure Covid-19 did not go out of control.…

Letter from Rome US President Joe Biden went before the United Nations September 21 and declared, “We are not seeking a new Cold War, or a world divided into rigid blocs.” The statement became necessary in the wake a week earlier of the new “AUKUS” pact among the US, the UK and Australia, seen precisely…

Barb Fraze As part of the listening and dialogue phase of the Australian Catholic Church’s Plenary Council, 220,000 Australians answered the question, “What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?” In 2015, Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge was asking himself something similar. Australia was in the midst of a government-mandated…

Notebook We’re all familiar with trade unions, organisations like SIPTU and ASTI, founded by workers in a particular sector, and designed to protect the rights and welfare of such workers. They play a vital role in society, and in modern times Popes have consistently made major pronouncements in their favour, most elaborately in Pope St…

Catherine Corless is greatly to be admired for her work revealing the extremely distressing facts about the Tuam Mother and Baby home, and she has now told her own story in an autobiography, Belonging. Ms Corless rebuffs the suggestion, which was included in the report of the commission on Tuam, that “it was us, society,…

The View Lack of time prevents me from doing as many talks as I once did (not to mention a worldwide pandemic.) I am not quite sure why I accepted an invitation to speak at the recent Holycross Abbey Novena but I am so glad I did. I was vaguely aware of Holycross Abbey but…

The target of halving carbon emissions in less than ten years will be enormously disruptive and expensive, writes David Quinn The Church is currently marking a month-long ‘Season of Creation’. It began on September 1, and ends on October 4. September 1 was the start date because Pope Francis has declared that day each year…