Notebook Last Sunday two young men called to see me after Mass. They’re students, sharing accommodation and, apart from their studies, they want to grow in holiness, to become the men God made them to be. They told me they had cleared a space on their bookshelves for books that would help them in this…

Does the provision of free and accessible contraception – to be introduced in Ireland within the next 18 months – halt the rate of abortion? There is a very useful opportunity for some sociology student to address this question, perhaps as a PhD thesis, over the next five years. Many people have believed that contraception…

Coverage of eco and pro-life activism are a case study in media bias, writes David Quinn If you want to know what a favoured movement looks like, and you wish to contrast it with one that is disfavoured, look no further that the environmentalist and pro-life movements. The starkly differing ways in which they are…

Facebook and Twitter can’t make hate go away, and we shouldn’t ask them to, writes John McGuirk “Hatred,” The Sunday Business Post declared this week, “is still having its say”. The paper’s eye-catching headline referred to a story by its reporter, Aaron Rogan, that Facebook and Twitter were still, as he put it, failing to…

“I remember when you used to visit the school, and we had such good times and fun there, but I never thought that the future would ever be like this.” I knew what he meant. His mother had just died following an accident – a young woman, with so much left to live and to…

The Government deserves no credit for Ireland’s energy policy, writes John McGuirk   By the time you are reading this, a litre of diesel or unleaded will cost much more than it does as I write this, on the Sunday evening before the budget. The fact that it costs more will have no impact whatsoever…

It was my good fortune to discover that my Dublin neighbour, in Stillorgan, is Dr Teresa Iglesias, the much admired scholar, academic and specialist on John Henry Newman. She edited with a new preface Newman’s famous text The Idea of a University and has been closely involved in preparations for the canonisation in Rome later…

How can a global religion help us navigate a global world, asks David Quinn   It’s fair to say we live in a time of big political turmoil. We don’t want to exaggerate, mind you. It is not anything like as turbulent as the years from World War I until the end of World War…

Notebook Is your priest punctual; does he start Mass on time? If he does, have you arrived by then? This issue arises in every parish in Ireland, where Mass can begin in one of three ways; a little early, bang on time, or a little (or a lot) late. There is a fourth possibility, which…