I don’t think I ever really understood loneliness when I was younger. Feeling lonely? Then join a club, develop an interest, get involved with a social project. The solution is in your own hands! But perhaps we grow more understanding with age – hopefully so, anyway – and I have come to empathise, much more than…

We are to have a referendum on May 24. The proposal is to change the Constitution to make it easier and quicker to get a divorce. The referendum will pass. For anyone who is brave enough to take part in public debate opposing the proposed change, I predict that this is the way it will…

An obsession with autonomy is driving up Ireland’s abortion rate, writes David Quinn   It was a classic case of ‘burying the lede’, that is to say, the real lead was not what the report highlighted. Instead the headline on the RTÉ website read: “Concerns raised about implementing new abortion laws.” The story was about…

Letter from Rome Inés San Martín   A group of Argentine bishops who travelled to Rome to meet their countryman Pope Francis have acknowledged that “abuses of power as well as sexual abuses” have caused distrust in the Church, but also expressed concern over what they called the “continuous attacks on the Pope” associated with the…

Theoretically, all baptised Catholics are supposed to strive for sanctity. If you’re like most of us, however, you rarely meet someone who just seems to radiate holiness – not a faux saccharine piety, but the real deal. We’re talking about the sort of personality with whom, after an encounter, you walk away thinking: “I just…

The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough   In the late afternoon of Holy Saturday last I found myself huffing and puffing down a windy, bumpy road in Glendalough. I had lost the pilgrim group I was meant to be leading, and I wasn’t sure if this path led back to the monastery, where our lift was…

I have been surprised by how quiet the national conversation has been about the coming divorce referendum – if there has been a meaningful national conversation at all. In 1995 (and during the two previous divorce referenda), the newspapers blazed with contesting opinions and the airwaves filled with heated debate. Perhaps louder debate will be engaged…

The View   The upcoming referendum proposing the relaxation of the Constitutional divorce provisions is likely to be passed. It should act as a spur for the Catholic Church to reconsider its attitude to marriage on two fronts: whether it will continue to act as a solemniser for civil marriages and whether the current approach…

One minority is consistently ignored in today’s Ireland, writes David Quinn   Minorities today often receive preferential status. This is to compensate in many cases for a past in which minorities were often discriminated against or rendered invisible. The compensation takes many forms. One is protection from criticism, hence politically correct policing of the things…