The View   Unless the Northern Ireland Assembly is reconstituted and an Executive is formed on or before October 21, 2019, abortion law in Northern Ireland will change utterly on October 22, 2019. 66% of women and 70% of 18-34-year-olds in the North said in a recent ComRes opinion poll that they did not want…

The excesses of the fertility industry will come back to bite us, writes David Quinn   We are rightly disgusted at some of the adoption scandals of the past, especially those that involve a mother being effectively forced to give up her child. Another source of scandals were those instances where a birth certificate was…

The leader of Fianna Fáil was at pains to announce to the public this week that he is making every effort to walk places, instead of being driven to places, in order to help combat climate change. If Micheál’s doctor is anything like mine, he or she will be delighted with him. My doctor can’t…

Francis and Benedict’s papacies are profoundly interwoven, writes Greg Daly   Claims this week that Pope Benedict had in 2005 wanted the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to serve as his Secretary of State and help clean up the Roman Curia may be surprising, especially to those who clutter and poison Catholic media with tales of…

Letter from Rome   When the Vatican announced last Thursday that Pope Francis had named a new spokesman, most early reaction suggested the move didn’t exactly inspire confidence about an upgrade in the role of the press office. The Pope tapped a 43-year-old Italian layman who’s worked in the press office for the last decade,…

S eventeen years ago, a priest at the Church of Santa Maria in Buenos Aires was tidying up when he discovered two small pieces of a Eucharistic host on the altar. Church rules told him exactly what to do in such a situation, and he followed them to the letter – placing the pieces of…

Notebook Fr Vincent Sherlock   It’s an old story now – well a few weeks old and that’s history, the way life moves on. The Taoiseach compared the leader of the opposition to being like a priest who speaks against sin while being a sinner himself. It was, in all fairness, a cheap and unnecessary…

Two funerals of Irishmen distinguished in their fields took place over the last week: one was a large popular gathering to mark the passing of the comedian Brendan Grace, who died aged 68. His funeral Mass was held in the heart of Dublin’s Liberties area, at the Church of Nicholas Myra in Francis Street. The…

The View   In her 1979 essay ‘Let Us Not Be Hypocritical’, the late Harvard professor Judith Shklar wrote that: “Hypocrisy remains the only unforgiveable sin even, perhaps especially, among those who can overlook and explain away almost every other vice.” I found myself reflecting on this idea recently, when the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, got…