The View Martin Mansergh Shortly, the people of the Irish State will be celebrating 100 years of independence, mostly with pride, despite the difficult circumstances of its birth. This will be done without trying to hide subsequent disappointments, failures and betrayals, or ignoring basic work that still has to be done. Commemoration will…
Category: Comment & Analysis
Fake news – but a real question
Could the Church consider blessings for some same-sex unions, asks Greg Daly “Cardinal Marx endorses blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples,” declared America’s Catholic News Agency (CNA) earlier this month, with a host of other Catholic news sites taking a similar line and with predictable fits of the vapours across the Catholic internet. Interviewed by…
Our most common sin
Classically Christianity has listed seven sins as ‘deadly’ sins, meaning that most everything else we do which is not virtuous somehow takes its root in one these congenital propensities. These are the infamous seven: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. In spiritual literature the first three – pride, greed and lust – get…
Who now will give themselves to a righteous cause?
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough Among the noble efforts to resist the Nazi regime was that of Sophie Scholl and the other members of Munich’s ‘White Rose’ group. This small group of friends printed and distributed thousands of copies of anti-Nazi leaflets, even, with incredible courage, throwing huge bundles of them down the staircase…
Healthcare and abortion: the ongoing studies
Some years ago, I attended a medical conference in London at which Prof. Joel Brind spoke. He has the chair in biology and endocrinology at New York’s Baruch College, and he is the leading exponent of the thesis that there is a link between breast cancer and induced abortion. Prof. Brind spoke as a scientist…
Ireland at the crossroads: will we vote to protect future generations?
The View There are a lot of questions about the forthcoming abortion referendum and the country’s response to it. Perhaps the first question is: does everyone know what the Eighth Amendment actually says? An important question, when the people are about to vote about whether it stays or it goes. It’s not just about…
Finding God in the midst of pain and suffering
Suffering is the flipside of love writes David Quinn Everyone at some point in their lives has to confront the awesome reality of suffering. It may come in the form of ill health, job loss or the breakup of a marriage. These things are bad when they happen to us personally but are often…
Faith and superstition
The power of a subordinate clause, one nuance within a sentence and everything takes on a different meaning. That’s the case in a recent brilliant, but provocative, novel, The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott. She tells a story which, among other things, focuses on a group of nuns in Brooklyn who work with the poor.…
We all need time to recharge
Fr Bernard Healy Every January, the clergy of my Diocese gather for our annual assembly. We spend three days away together for renewal and ongoing formation. Until recently this was a Priests’ Assembly, but now we have been enriched by the presence of our Permanent Deacons. We take those three days to listen to…
What are we to make of Hungary’s claim on Christian values?
What are we to make of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader who is almost certain to be swept back to power in the Hungarian spring election? He is regarded as an ‘anti-liberal’ and ‘semi-authoritarian’ by the European Union – and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was widely criticised in Ireland just for paying a visit to Mr…