As Catholics, we have a responsibility to vaccinate, writes Ruadhán Jones The question of vaccination comes up around this time every year, but never before with such force. We are all awaiting the results of the various tests underway for a vaccine for Covid-19 with bated breath. Some 240 vaccines are in early development, with…
Category: Comment & Analysis
Concern mounts as the Brexit clock winds down
Border communities insist that a deal between Britain and the EU is vital for the peace process, reports Chai Brady, Ruadhán Jones and Jason Osborne The coronavirus pandemic has dominated domestic and international news for most of 2020 which has led to the overshadowing of other current events but Brexit still looms large in the…
Colleges are churning out graduates fed a diet of creeds that will damage society
Despite being told that there is no such thing as truth, students are told to accept theories that are younger than they are without question, writes Ronan Doheny While University College Dublin’s marketing campaign to attract new students uses the slogan ‘Think Bigger’, my experiences in UCD and Trinity College Dublin have found the opposite…
We pat ourselves on the back about online Masses, but many people do not engage with this model of the Church
Parishes lament the absence of young people, but most are happy and do not want to be disturbed, writes Gerard Gallagher W hen Pope Francis published Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato Si’ and Amoris Laetitia there was an excessive amount of praise. It has been striking how much quieter the reception of Christus Vivit – his document…
Catechetical cataclysms: restored Holy Stairs give meaning to crisis
Letter from Rome After 20 years of restoration work and millions in funding from benefactors worldwide, the unveiling of the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs in Rome was supposed to be a grand, celebratory moment slated for this spring, in time for Holy Week and Easter. The public was going to be able to…
Archbishop accuses Turkey of backing ‘third Armenian genocide’
According to an Armenian archbishop, Turkey is perpetrating a “third genocide” against the oldest Christian nation in the world. He claims Turkey is using Azerbaijan to attack the Christian community in Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region of Azerbaijan that has been a de facto independent state since the 1990’s. Recent fighting in the region has seen its churches…
Personal sanity depends on truth
Looking at our world today, what frightens and unsettles me more than the threat of the Covid-19 virus, more than the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, more than the dangers of climate change, and even more than the bitter hatred that now separates us from each other, is our loss of any…
Words and thoughts for a newly-arrived grandniece
Notebook I was in your house the day they brought you home. I watched your two-year-old sister and wondered what was going through her mind. I saw your mother, glad to be home but tired too, having carried you so lovingly, through those long months of waiting, and now sharing you with a world that,…
Dying with dignity is a mendacious misnomer
One of the most mendacious aspects of the Dying with Dignity bill, it seems to me, is calling it ‘dying with dignity’. It is an assisted suicide measure, and if truth meant anything in the public realm, that is what it should be called. ‘Dying with dignity’ is a propaganda phrase which deliberately implies that…
The Government must justify denying ‘freedom of choice’ to religious believers
The View Last week the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference published a message to the Faithful entitled ‘Do not lose heart’. A day later it was reported that the four Catholic archbishops of Ireland had requested a meeting with the Taoiseach to address the current restrictions that prevent the celebration of public masses. The news gave…

Ruadhán Jones





Fr Ronald Rolheiser

Mary Kenny
Maria Steen