I have friends who are on holiday in Italy at the moment, and they are having a wonderful time. Access to the historic monuments is spaced and well-arranged. Pompeii is as awesome as ever and Naples as full of life and charm as it always was. The lakes are fabulous (even if the Med is inclined…
The View The US election poses yet another difficult choice for Catholics. Yes, Joe Biden plays on his Catholic heritage to the extent that he has featured his 2016 meeting with Pope Francis in campaign advertisements. However, in that same video, he also talked about meeting a group of nuns the same day, “lovely women”…
More and more doctors will be willing to end a life deliberately and doctors who disagree will be driven out, writes David Quinn Eight years ago, during the furore following the death in a Galway hospital of Savita Halappanavar, the then bishop of Kilmore, Leo O’Reilly, warned that introducing abortion legislation even in a limited…
Letter from Rome For all intents and purposes, as a liturgical matter Italy’s coronavirus pandemic is over as of the weekend. Beginning on Sunday, family members and friends are no longer required to observe social distancing when they come to church, and churches are once again able to have choirs at Mass and the assembly…
…by far and away, the biggest addiction in the whole world The ancient Greeks had gods and goddesses for everything, including a goddess of Shame called Aidos. Shame for them meant much more than it normally means to us. In their mind, shame brought with it modesty, respect and a certain needed reticence before things…
Notebook It can be very hard to involve young married people in the life of the parish. It’s understandable – they haven’t a minute to themselves, between driving their children to GAA training, matches, piano lessons, pony-riding, Comhaltas…you get the picture. Young parents, anxious to give their children every opportunity, seem to be forever on the…
The former king, Juan Carlos of Spain – who has gone into voluntarily exile after a series of scandals – would not be the first Bourbon monarch to be in trouble because of money matters and an unwise extra-marital liaison. It is understood that Juan Carlos’ son, Felipe, insisted his father leave Spain because of…
The View A book that I treasure for many reasons is a Holy Bible given to me as a Christening present in 1947, and inscribed “to my godson Martin with affectionate greetings”. It is compact with a leather cover, and, despite being well thumbed, its 1,400 pages of thin but strong paper are very well preserved.…
It would seem that only a fraction of those who used to attend Mass have returned, writes David Quinn In America, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, Thomas Tobin is worried that when this pandemic finally ends a lot of worshippers will not return to Mass because they will have lost the habit. On Twitter…
Letter from Rome I never thought I’d live to see it, but there it was in The New York Times on July 23, big as life, in the headline over a column by Paul Krugman: ‘Why can’t America be like Italy?’ Since then, unflattering comparisons of the US to Italy in terms of handling the coronavirus have become…
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser