The View Have you ever felt really vulnerable, totally unable to control the circumstances of your life, knowing that you are reliant on others for your ongoing safety and existence, fearful of the future and of being a burden to others, afraid that you are perceived as having no real value in this complex world?…

Few things cause Christianity more trouble in the Western world than what it has to say about sexual morality, writes David Quinn Pope Francis knows that the gulf between the Church and secular society when it comes to sex is massive and is trying to address it by softening the edges and presentation of that…

Purposeful meetings are life-giving and this is the reason the Northern Pastoral Network continues to meet, writes Paula McKeown In Church circles there are many phrases being bounced around that can leave nothing but negativity ringing between the ears: “The accelerator has been pressed on secularisation.” “The few families that were coming haven’t come back.”…

The sense of Sunday still resonates deeply with Christians throughout this country and throughout the world, writes Julie Kavanagh A s a parish cantor, I have been one of the privileged few able to attend Mass on a Sunday throughout this pandemic. I don’t take that privilege lightly. I have experienced first-hand the loneliness of…

Assisted suicides present an unhelpful and dubious choice of relief or continuous pain, writes Fr SeánMacGiollarnáth, O. Carm. The Hippocratic tradition in medicine is under threat through the removal of traditional protections at the beginning and the end of human life. Law and medicine both reflect dominant tendencies and practices in culture and politics which…

It beggars belief that the same people who insist they want to protect vulnerable people from Covid-19 are now pushing assisted suicide, writes Niamh UíBhriain While everyone is distracted by the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Dáil deputies have moved forward a bill which would make it legal for doctors to help a person who is terminally-ill…

In Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis saw same-sex marriage as an attack on children but he did think that gay people should be included in civil unions, writes Austen Ivereigh In Argentina, there was one issue over which a direct confrontation with the government was inevitable. Although Cristina Kirchner was president, it was Néstor…

Francis is willing to risk confusion for the sake of inclusion, writes Michael Kelly The Pope’s backing for legislation for civil unions for gay couples is a big deal. It’s also a significant shift away from the policy of his immediate predecessors who warned Catholics that opposing such unions was an obligation. It’s important to…

Letter from Rome Almost 75 years ago, Arnold Toynbee described what historians are trying to find as they scour the past in his book Civilization on Trial: “The things that make good headlines are on the surface of the stream of life, and they distract us from the slower, impalpable, imponderable movements that work below the…

After almost a year of civil unrest, interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, Chileans overwhelmingly approved a bid to scrap the constitution written under the mandate of General Augusto Pinochet, a dictator who ruled the country until 1990. The Chilean conference of Catholic bishops called the referendum, where almost 80% of those who cast a vote…