The View Catholic education in this country is not working. Last Summer’s abortion referendum was a wake-up call in this regard: how could so many people, educated in Catholic schools for the most part, have voted to strip the most vulnerable among us of all rights? How could an educated Catholic have voted for…
The Church may need a serious theology of masculinity, writes David Quinn Men have been receiving a very bad press lately, and not just specific men, but men in general. The words ‘toxic’ and ‘masculinity’ are commonly and routinely joined together in a way ‘toxic’ and ‘femininity’ rarely are. The current round of attacks…
Everything is of one piece. Whenever we don’t take that seriously, we pay a price. The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot…
The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy Tidying up isn’t my favourite activity! I had to do a lot of it this summer when I moved from a parish assignment back to student life. Even so, I’m surprised that the latest reality show hit Tidying Up With Marie Kondo caught my attention. Now, I’ve seen…
The View Two recent incidents nudged my conscience. The first was a young woman who told me that something from one of my talks had lingered with her and she had tried to implement it. The topic mentioned was moral licensing, in the sense of feeling that I am such a good Christian that…
The State, backed up by the national broadcaster, is now trying to throttle the life out of the pro-life movement, writes David Quinn RTÉ has evidently decided that abortion is a settled issue. The matter was decided in favour of abortion by a two-to-one margin last May, and those who run the show at…
The sad truth is that a very large chunk of the blame for the collapse of Catholic Ireland must be placed squarely at the doorstep of the Church, writes David Thunder When a third of the population poured into the Phoenix Park on September 29, 1979 to celebrate Mass with Pope John Paul II,…
The Church in Ireland has a humble yet vital contribution to make to the universal Church on safeguarding, Archbishop Eamon Martin tells Michael Kelly All eyes will be in Rome next month for an unprecedented meeting of bishops to discuss the devastating issues of clerical abuse scandals in the universal Church. While the Church…
When it comes to adopted people acquiring the right to trace their birth parents, I can imagine various scenarios, drawn partly from experience of cases I’ve known. One is of an older woman who, back in the 1960s, had a baby when single. At the time, she was assured by everyone who knew of her…
Letter from Rome Famously, Pope Francis isn’t one for spending a lot of time thinking about doctrinal questions or disputes. The Pontiff often mocks theologians for obsessing over the fine print of things, recycling a quote from Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople to Pope Paul VI after an historic 1964 meeting: “We’ll bring about unity…
Maria Steen
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Breda O'Brien
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
John L. Allen Jr.