The constraints brought about by Covid-19 have merely accelerated an inevitable decline, writes Chai Brady Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has never made a secret of the fact that he wanted out of Dublin when he was obliged to tender his resignation to the Pope on his 75th birthday. That milestone passed more than five months ago,…

Letter from Rome Some people, it would appear, simply are born for exile. Sometimes it’s a firebrand personality constantly irking the powers that be, but in other cases it’s mostly bad luck, circumstance and the fact that a given person is an inconvenient reminder of a system’s failures and blind spots even without trying. The…

Ed Condon Next month, the 2018 Vatican-China deal expires. Those close to the negotiations, both in Rome and in Beijing, now confidently predict a one-year extension to the two-year deal to be agreed. But while the last two years have failed to deliver any measurable progress on the Vatican’s priorities, the status quo of all-dialogue-and-no-delivery…

Notebook You may well consider this an example of too much information but when visitors to my home use the guest bathroom they rarely ever comment on the very high quality hand soap on offer or even the interesting selection of reading material strategically placed for those whose stay may be a little longer. However,…

Surely the best health news announced recently was that wild polio has now been officially eradicated from Africa. This was an ambition declared by Nelson Mandela in 1996, and it has now been achieved: the 47 countries in the continent of Africa have been certified by the World Health Organisation as “free of polio”. ‘Wild…

The View A man I have known for many years died last week in our parish. He was a genuinely good man – husband and father of four children, very talented, a former vice-principal at our local grammar school, but what marked Declan Martin out was his consistent service to and care of others, and his…

With restrictions ongoing, many parishes are in deep financial trouble, writes Chai Brady While the tired old canard of priests always talking about the need to raise parish funds persists, many clerics are in fact reluctant ever to raise conversations about money. The fact remains, however, that parishes cannot run on goodwill alone and the…

Many people who don’t believe in God do believe that human behaviour is simply the result of social conditioning, writes David Quinn Atheists often enjoy making sport of religion. They mock us for believing in the ‘great sky-fairy’ (meaning God), or the virgin birth, or that a man can walk on the water, or rise…

Letter from Rome Robert Merton, a famous American sociologist, was, by all accounts, a smart guy. Among other things, he popularised the expression “law of unintended consequences” to refer to situations when a person does something for one reason, but he or she finds that it produces all sorts of other unexpected results. Right now,…