The Notebook   Many years ago, my friends Monica Brown and Hilary Musgrave introduced me to the whole experience of sacred clowning. Hilary and Monica lead retreats all over the world and the sacred clown ‘Naofa’ is an integral part of their unique approach to spirituality. Sacred clowning has to be experienced because trying to…

Ireland’s abortion regime makes visible pro-life campaigning all the more vital, writes Niamh Uí Bhriain   Voter regret in regard to the abortion referendum is real and it is growing. Every month seems to bring a new and more shocking revelation about Simon Harris’s new abortion regime, and in response come increasing numbers of people…

The View Martin Mansergh Pope Francis’ approval of the Italian bishops’ decision to render more precise the passage in the Lord’s Prayer in Italian that is the equivalent of, but perhaps not precisely the same as ‘lead us not into temptation’ was news here, in the sense that it came as a surprise to most…

Imagine a scenario in which it came to be known that cars with defective seat belts had been allowed on to the market. Now imagine that this information on the increased risk of passenger fatalities was known to government and all the major political parties prior to the sale of the cars, but they failed…

Claims that Ireland was repressed in the 1980s are absurd, writes David Quinn   ‘Why were we so hateful?’, the editorial in the Irish Examiner asked of Irish people living in the 1980s. A feature last weekend in the Irish Independent described the same decade as “traumatising” for women. The 1980s is in the spotlight…

Parents are morally obliged to vaccinate their children, writes Colm Fitzpatrick   With the recent spate of measles outbreaks across Ireland, questions have been raised about what role both parents and government play in preventing the spread of infectious illnesses. Vaccinations, of course, seem to be the obvious solution as they provide immunity to the…

A new Vatican document invites important questions about dialogue and understanding, writes Kevin O’Higgins SJ   This month, the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education issued a document, ‘Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue On the Question of Gender Theory in Education’. While the focus is on gender theory in relation…

Letter from Rome Inés San Martín   Pope Francis visited the southern Italian city of Naples last Friday, participating in a theology congress dedicated to interreligious dialogue and migration in the context of the Mediterranean Sea. The Argentine Pontiff revisited some of his core concepts, calling for theologians to be an expression of a Church…

Every so often, we get official confirmation of the obvious, and, surprisingly enough, it still makes waves. Such is the case again with the release of a preparatory document for an October summit of bishops on the Amazon, which confirms that the ordination of married “elderly people”, meaning men, will be on the agenda. From…