There was great news for Ireland last week: the population of this country is due to increase by more than a million people in the next decade or so. The prediction from the ESRI is that by 2030, the population will have grown by 1.1 million. Population increase – particularly for countries which are under-populated,…

The View   In a significant development, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee) has challenged its sister body, the Committee on Human Rights. Or perhaps the latter should instead be called the Committee on Human Rights for some, because it has been pushing a ‘right’ to abortion on…

Many Protestants and Catholics have found common cause in fighting for fundamental rights, the Pope should encourage this writes David Quinn   Short of some unforeseen development, Pope Francis will be here next August for the World Meeting of Families. Everything he says and does will totally overshadow everything else that takes place at the…

Merton treasured the word, writes Michael W. Higgins   Pope Francis recognised in the monk-poet Thomas Merton a prophetic and moral genius, ranked along with Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln.  And he did that in Washington, in a powerful address to the Joint Houses of Congress. Can you imagine that happening now…

Letter from Rome   Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the message.” In the same vein, one might add that equally often, “the messenger is the message.” When you’re trying to put a human face on something, in other words, the best strategy is usually to have a genuinely decent person making the pitch.…

Fr Bernard Healy   I was in Dublin a few weeks back for the launch of the ‘Photo Detectives’ exhibition at the National Photographic Archive in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar. The exhibition celebrates the work of a project launched by the National Library of Ireland back in June 2011. Every weekday a photo from…

It’s hard to find your soulmate in someone who doesn’t believe you have a soul. Recently on The Moth Radio Hour, a young woman shared the story of her breakup with her boyfriend, a young man for whom she had deep feelings. The problem was that she, a person with a deep faith, a Mormon,…

The grandchildren are getting all ready for Hallowe’en with their witches and warlocks and wizards’ costumes. Let’s not rain on their parade, I ponder. The turning of the seasons has to be marked by some ritual and if it’s a pagan one – which has endured and even been re-invigorated – then that’s the way…

Kathleen Dowling Singh, RIP   No community should botch its deaths. That’s a wise statement from Mircea Eliade and apropos in the face of the death two weeks ago of Kathleen Dowling Singh. Kathleen was a hospice worker, a psychotherapist, and a very deep and influential spiritual writer. She is known and deeply respected among…

Fr Conor McDonough   ‘Post tenebras lux’ (‘Light after the darkness’), the motto of Calvin’s Geneva, is proposed by some as a summary of the Reformation. After the darkness of the Middle Ages, the previously hidden light of the Word of God is unleashed by Luther and his followers who come armed with vernacular Bibles,…