The Notebook   Fr Conor McDonough   Some three weeks ago a supermarket in the small town of Trèbes in the southwest of France, became a scene of terror. An armed man, Redouane Lakdim, claiming to act in the name of Islam, entered the shop, shot a worker and a customer, and took a hostage,…

The View   The view that an unborn child has the right to life is a view which is shared by millions across the world. You would not think so, listening to some of the media in Ireland at the moment. As long ago as 1924, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child…

Growing up in Dublin in the 1950s and 60s, I never heard the word ‘rape’. That is not to deny the reality of sexual assault – we know that it can occur in all societies. But the older women in my family, and the various teachers, neighbours and friends with whom I came in contact…

Speaking one’s mind can be both controversial and compelling, writes David Quinn   Recently I came across for the first time an interpretation of why the Jews spent 40 years in the desert before finally arriving at the Promised Land. It was to “purify them” of the slave mentality. I then found this is a…

The ban on women’s ordination is not based on theological speculation, but on the Apostolic tradition of the Church, writes Fr Vincent Twomey SVD   On the Feast Day of our national Saint, the Irish Independent published a two-page article by management consultant Eddie Molloy: ‘Church must face appalling vista of its abominable treatment of…

The theory of relativity tells us that space and time are not what they appear to be. They’re relative, meaning that don’t always function in the same way and they aren’t always experienced in the same way. Time can stand still. Or can it? This side of eternity, it would seem not. Ever since the…

The Notebook   I still don’t know to this day what originally caused it but for the first 25 years of my life our two families were locked in a bitter neighbourhood feud. We were next-door neighbours in a very close knit rural Irish village nestled under the shadow of the mountains. Our homes were…

As we know, Easter was deliberately chosen as the date for the Rising, because of the religious association with both sacrifice and resurrection. Some Catholic commentators have judged this was not appropriate – faith symbols used for a political movement – but be that as it may, it was meaningful to the men and women…

One of the country’s smallest dioceses remains in turmoil with questions now being asked about its future, writes Martin O’Brien   This is a Holy Week and Easter like none before in the history of the Diocese of Dromore, and for all the wrong reasons. The diocese, one of the smallest in the country, headquartered…