The Hollywood actresses – sometimes they prefer to be called ‘female actors’ – made a global impact, surely, by dressing in (very chic) black for the Golden Globe awards. As did Oprah Winefrey’s electrifying speech vowing that the sexual harassment and even routine rape which has been part of Hollywood culture since Joan Crawford was…

The Church needs to hold to its principles and pick its battles, writes David Quinn   The Churches in Ireland tend to have an extremely softly-softly attitude towards the State and the Government of the day. They rarely criticise either and when they do, it is in a very muted way. There are several reasons…

Far from being a burden, older Catholics are a source of renewal and new growth, writes Fr Paddy Gleeson   An article in the New York Times in early December spoke of the dramatic decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland in recent decades. Towards the end of the article, the Archbishop of Dublin Dr…

Spirituality   There’s a line in the writings of Julian of Norwich, the famous 14th-Century mystic and perhaps the first theologian to write in English, which is endlessly quoted by preachers, poets and writers: “but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”. It’s her signature…

The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough   In the early 1990s, Lu Nan, a Chinese photographer, shot a series of black and white photographs documenting the life of a tiny community of Catholic villagers in Shaanxi. They are all stunning images, and easily found online, but what really stands out for me are the images showing…

It is inevitable that in 2018 there will be much public discourse on the subject of Humanae Vitae – it being the fiftieth anniversary, in July this year, of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical (‘Of Human Life’). After two papal commissions, and many committees of experts, Paul VI reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teaching against artificial contraception…

The View   On the day the Oireachtas Committee considering the Eighth Amendment recommended to the government to hold a referendum to legalise abortion in this country, a miraculous news story appeared across the water in Britain. Vanellope Hope Wilkins was born a month premature with a condition that had caused doctors to advise her…

David Quinn casts his eagle eye over who was hot and who was not in the secular world   In the run-up to Christmas, Pope Francis noted that out of a sense of “false respect” for non-Christians we are airbrushing Christ and Christianity from the festival. The Pope said: “In the name of a false…

Taste is subjective. Keep that in mind as I share with you the 10 books that most touched me last year. That isn’t necessarily a recommendation that you read them. They may leave you cold, or angry at me that I praised them. Be your own critic here and one who isn’t afraid to be…

The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy   The release of an animated movie called The Star caught my attention. The premise of the film – an imaginative telling of the Nativity focusing on the donkey and his animal companions reminded me that we have a plethora of traditions about various animals associated with the Christmas story.…