No organisation in history has made a more systematic or bigger contribution to healthcare worldwide than the Catholic Church, writes David Quinn In the row about the future of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH), Catholic healthcare has been unfairly demonised. The spectre has been raised that the Church will somehow exercise influence over the new…

Junno Arocho Esteves Taking the stand for a second time at his Vatican trial, Cardinal Angelo Becciu spent more than two hours reading a statement in which he claimed accusations of financial impropriety were an attempt to stain his reputation. At the trial May 5, Cardinal Becciu said he felt “immense pain” when Pope Francis…

Where can all of us believers come together beyond the divisions created by history, dogma, denomination, and religion? Where is there a place all people of sincere heart can find common ground and worship together? That place is found in the ecumenical and interreligious pursuit of spirituality, and our theology schools and seminaries need to…

Notebook In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings there is a wonderful passage when the wizard Gandalf is face to face with Denethor, the ruler of Gondor. In the face of the threat of the evil Sauron, Denethor sees it as his task to defend his kingdom, and above all to keep the walls…

The View Long ago in a different century, I was a member of a college drama society. One of the plays we put on was a Thornton Wilder piece called Our Town. In the course of that play (spoiler alert) there is an unashamed tear-jerker moment. Emily, a 26-year-old who has died, is allowed to…

There was a time when the laity didn’t take it upon themselves to advise a bishop, and the distance was maintained between the See and the flock. But we are moving at a different tempo now, as the new Bishop of Galway, Michael Duignan, indicated at his installation last weekend. Synodial measures are encouraging the…

The institution on which the family is based is in trouble and no-one cares, writes David Quinn Marriage in Ireland is changing rapidly. Fewer marry at all. We marry later. We are more likely to break up, and same-sex couples as well as opposite sex couples can legally wed. There are far more civil ceremonies…

A friend of mine, somewhat cynical about the Church, recently remarked: “What the institutional Church today is trying to do is to put its best face on the fact that it’s dying. Basically, it’s trying to manage a death.” What he’s suggesting is that the Church today, like a person struggling to accept a terminal…

Notebook When I was about seven years old, my county, and indeed the whole country, was shocked by the murder of Bernadette Connolly, a young girl from Collooney. It was as if the world had stopped spinning and her name was on everyone’s lips. Later, I came to know her father and some of her…

The View Here is a peculiar thing that is becoming more and more apparent in what passes for public discourse these days – Irish feminists don’t seem to like strong, opinionated women. That might seem counter-intuitive: after all, the whole point of feminism, one imagines, is to encourage women to be whatever they want to be. We certainly hear lots…