If no human act is intrinsically wrong, morality is reduced to a calculus of consequences, writes Fr Vincent Twomey SVD   It was 1968. Revolution was in the air. New-found affluence after the austerities of the post World War II era coupled with the sudden, unprecedented burst of scientific and technological creativity in the 1960s…

The View Martin Mansergh   A collateral benefit of religious observance is that, from time to time, if one is listening to the readings, one is able to identify the source of familiar sayings. One of the best known is, “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (St. Mark’s Gospel, 3. 24-5).…

WMOF 2018   “This is a wonderful opportunity, a Kairos moment for the renewal of the Church in Ireland and the young people here, they are just simply excited at the prospect of being in the same field as Pope Francis.” There is no mistaking the sense of excitement and expectation in the voice of…

A particularly powerful Gospel story recounts Jesus meeting with a Syro-Phoenician woman. Central to that story is where their encounter takes place, on the borders of Samaria. For Jesus, Samaria was a foreign territory, both in terms of ethnicity and religion. In his encounter with this woman, he is standing at the edges, the borders, of…

The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy   Near London’s Marble Arch, at the junction of Bayswater Road and Edgeware Road, there is a triangular traffic island. On the island are planted three oak saplings, and on the ground between them sits a stone plaque that reads ‘The Site of Tyburn Tree’. This marks the spot of…

The economic boffins are now saying that a united Ireland is an entirely realistic proposition in the wake of Brexit. Indeed, that it could be the most sensible solution to the problem of the United Kingdom planning to leave the European Union while the island of Ireland, as a whole, wishes to remain within the…

The View   The United Kingdom is in a very strange place. The approach to Brexit has been muddled, uninformed and chaotic. It seems that nobody can quite work out what is happening or what should happen. For Ireland there is equal chaos – there is fear that Brexit will result in huge damage to…

The State can’t protect families if we can’t even agree on the definition, writes David Quinn   The Government’s liberal push shows no sign of abating. On the contrary, its victories in the likes of the abortion and same-sex marriage referenda have only spurred them on. It now has in mind for us referenda on divorce,…

Some arguments for removing Ireland’s blasphemy law are dubious at best, writes Greg Daly   The Constitution’s provisions concerning blasphemy are an embarrassment to Irish diplomats and would-be statesmen. Such, at least, seems to be the import of comments last month from Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan on plans to hold a referendum in October on…

Inés San Martín   An already noticeable edge to Argentina’s mounting abortion debate turned even nastier in mid-July with the release of a ‘Doom’-inspired video game called ‘Doom Fetito’ in which players scramble to procure an abortion-inducing drug by battling Catholic priests, Nazi-like police and pro-life women, and then ultimately kill ‘the boss’, meaning an…