Notebook Once upon a time, I was a media celebrity — for about a day. An article I wrote about weddings won me a spot on ‘Liveline’, then hosted by Marion Finucane: literally my 15 minutes of fame. The article was based on an amalgam of wedding experiences from the parishes I had been in.…

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was much praised for writing openly about having suffered a miscarriage last July. She and Prince Harry felt “unbearable grief” after they lost their second baby. The miscarriage occurred while she was changing the nappy of her one-year-old son, Archie. “I knew as I clutched my firstborn child that I was…

The View November was the month the skies began to lift. In a year that for most people has been an endurance test there was some limited compensation in the fact that on average, despite incidents of flooding and high winds that brought trees down, the weather has been distinctly better than average, though not…

The Polish Pontiff’s reluctance to believe abuse allegation is a black mark against him, but it does not take from the greatness of his papacy, writes David Quinn Pope St John Paul II does not emerge well from the recently published Vatican investigation into Theodore McCarrick, the former and now disgraced cardinal archbishop of Washington…

To many secular eyes, the very idea that anyone would seek participation in public worship of God is alien, writes Declan Ganley On Wednesday of last week, just before America relaxed for its annual Thanksgiving holiday, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Governor of New York’s Covid-19 related ban on public worship. The full…

The relaxed moral norms of today come at a much greater cost than advertised, writes Oisín Walsh We’ve landed in a paradoxical place in terms of sexuality. In the bad old days, it was scandalous to deviate from the Catholic norms surrounding relationships. Nowadays, to be seen to adhere in any way to such norms…

Ellen’s Coyne journey through faith could have been gripping – unfortunately it ended up confirming her pre-existing beliefs writes Michael Kelly I was 17-years-old in 1996 when then finance minister Ruairi Quinn referred to Ireland as what he described as a “post-Catholic, pluralist republic”. The comments provoked controversy at the time with many people asking whether…

Bishop Paul Dempsey tells Ruadhán Jones about the integral role the Church can play post-Covid Today, religion is often viewed as a “risk factor for division… at worst, as a problem to be solved”, according to a lengthy new report by the Free Church of England. Religious views are seen as divisive barriers to progress…

Letter from Argentina Self-described as the “light blue majority” and backed by polls that show most Argentines oppose legalisation of abortion pushed by the government, thousands of families rallied in 400 cities across Pope Francis’s native country last Saturday to voice support for the life of the unborn child and that of the expectant mother.…

J.D. Flynn Washington’s Cardinal, made a cardinal last weekend, told a journalist on November 24 that in his diocese, he will not deny Communion to a politician who has pledged to enshrine access to abortion in federal law and permit federal funding of abortions. That politician is President-elect Joe Biden. Archbishop Wilton Gregory’s comment is…