If the Government wants to abolish oaths, it should. Replacing it with a meaningless statement of truth is pointless, writes John McGuirk Finally. Witnesses will no longer be required to swear before God or make an affirmation when filing affidavits under new proposals agreed by the Cabinet. Instead they will be able to make what…
Letter from Rome Junno Arocho Esteves In the Catholic Church, a person’s canonisation is almost always preceded by decades of meticulous investigation into the minute details of the candidate’s life. Thousands of saints have been raised to the altars after these thorough investigations, while the causes of many other candidates are usually suspended or closed…
In his book The Secret, Rene Fumoleau has a poem entitled ‘Sins’. Fumoleau, who was a missionary priest with the Dene Peoples in Northern Canada, once asked a group of Elders to name what they considered the worst sin of all. Their answer: The 10 Dene discussed together, And after a while Radisca explained to…
Notebook There was a funny song a while back about a man going into Lidl or Aldi to buy a few loaves and rashers and leaving with a chainsaw, a wetsuit and a portable generator. I have been that man… well apart from the wetsuit and maybe the generator and the chainsaw! I mean, I…
I grew up in a world where most people who had jobs worked in an office, a shop, a factory or some form of shared working location. Very few people spent the working day alone – perhaps the farmer out in his fields, or the priest saying his breviary – but even then, there was a…
The View On June 30, the Department of Health published the first annual report on abortion following the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in 2018. The report, though scant in detail, gave us a glimpse of the new reality of abortion in Ireland: 6,666 abortions in just one year. During the referendum campaign, pro-life spokespeople…
The Vatican is under increasing pressure to take a stronger line with Beijing, writes Jason Osborne Recent footage documenting blindfolded, handcuffed, and shaven-headed people being detained and loaded onto a train in the Xinjiang region of northern China has seen the international spotlight slowly turning in China’s direction. What China is being accused of is…
Slavery remains one of the great stains on human history and the role of Christians is chequered, writes David Quinn In America there is an attempt to have 1776, the year Independence was declared, supplanted in the national memory by a new date – 1619. That is the year the first group of 20 slaves…
Letter from America In failing to challenge Donald Trump on his moral inconsistencies, Catholics have also failed their Church One of my all-time favourite television shows is The West Wing, the seven-season epoch chronicling life inside the White House’s executive office. At the helm of the nation is President Jed Bartlett, a Catholic Democrat who…
It is normal to feel restless as a child, lonely as a teenager, and frustrated by lack of intimacy as an adult; after all we live with insatiable desires of every kind, none of which will ever find full fulfillment this side of eternity. Where do these desires come from? Why are they so insatiable?…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Maria Steen
David Quinn