The View One mercy of the General Election is that it diminished attention to the actual moment of Brexit on January 31. Brexit was not an election issue, given all-party agreement and support, but history will give credit, absent from the ballot box, to the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon…

The world is better for their presence over the years, writes David Quinn The record of the nuns is under attack again. The latest accusation is one of racism against children of ‘mixed race’ who found themselves in Mother and Baby homes and other Church-run institutions. The last Mother and Baby home closed down several…

Letter from Rome February 21 marked exactly one year since the anniversary of Pope Francis’ historic summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis, which brought together presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences to promote a global culture of transparency and accountability. Coincidentally, the milestone came as the world focuses on a very different kind of…

Notebook Every church in Ireland has a box-shaped receptacle, of gold or silver, often decorated with precious jewels. In years past this special container was placed in the centre of the ‘high altar’, but now it’s usually on its own, on a separate column or plinth, with its own spotlight, in its own distinct space,…

I don’t imagine that the elections for the Seanad will deliver as much sound and fury as the General Election for the Dail. Quite rightly too – the Upper House is a secondary chamber which doesn’t govern the country. But it still seems to me to be important, and to bring another dimension to the…

The View I spent some time recently with a group of very fine priests reflecting on their vocations and on their work as priests, work which is centred on sustaining ordinary people like me and you, sometimes in profoundly difficult circumstances, nourishing us and helping us on our journey home to the Lord who made…

Amazonian exhortation points towards Pope’s real aim, writes David Quinn   When Humanae Vitae was issued in 1968 by Pope Paul VI, it was greeted with dismay and anger by many people, including practicing Catholics, who expected the Church to relax its previous prohibition against the use of artificial means of birth control by Catholics.…

Seán
 Cassin   The Irish Embassy in Hanoi has an incisive and challenging comment on its website about Vietnam’s economy. It reads “high rates of malnutrition are often masked by impressive economic development. In Vietnam, stunting still affects almost one in four children, and among ethnic minority groups this reaches almost 40%.” I read on…