Our population is boosted by young migrants, but we are still aging rapidly and declining sharply, writes David Quinn Last year, almost 4,000 fewer babies were born in Ireland than in 2019. This is partly a Covid-effect. Countries around the world have experienced a bigger than usual fall in their birth rates, presumably because of…

Letter from Rome Covering the Catholic Church is a tough gig for reporters, not least because we’re often forced to be killjoys. We’re forever put in the position of raining on a media parade, and such was the case again Friday with the sensational “resignation” of Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. In reality, that was…

The new series of laws and provisions set out in the revised section on crimes and penalties in the Code of Canon Law will help the Catholic Church in its efforts at safeguarding, said two canon lawyers. Pope Francis promulgated the new changes in ‘Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church’, and they will go…

Notebook A few years ago I found myself in a pub – remember them? – for a friend’s engagement party. There I got chatting to a young doctor. We got chatting about our studies, and he was astonished to find out that I had studied science as an undergraduate yet somehow ended up a priest.…

“Will you watch the new film, The 8th, about the 2018 referendum?” I asked a friend who had canvassed for the pro-life cause in that plebiscite. “Through gritted teeth,” she replied. The film was, as the film critic Donald Clarke put it, “ecstatic” for its’ natural constituency – that is, the pro-choice side. (It is…

The View Even three years on, many of us are still grieving the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. The grief is not as raw as it once was but it will probably never go away. It is so tempting to give up and to decide that the gulf is unbridgeable. Thankfully, most pro-life activists have settled…

Baptism is the key that unlocked the door to a valid Catholic marriage for Boris Johnson, writes Jason Osborne Social media is a rarely a home to calm, quiet discussion, and the conversation than emerged following the news of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’ wedding was no different. Many expressed outrage at the Church’s seemingly…

A strict religious life that is highly regimented does not fit well with modern tastes, writes David Quinn ‘Was Mother Teresa a cult leader?’, ran the headline in The New York Times last week, and with that began yet another attack on the Catholic saint. St Teresa of Kolkata, as she is now known within…

Letter from Rome Whenever there’s a vacancy in the papacy, a few old saws about the process of choosing a Pope shoot back into circulation. “He who enters a conclave a Pope, exits a cardinal,” is a perennial, as is, “Those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk”. (Both are actually half…