Fr Andrew McMahon “I have no problem with civil partnership…I do think that marriage is separate…And I would be of the view that it doesn’t have to be the case for everyone, but the preferable construct in a society is the traditional family, and the State through its laws should protect that and promote that.…

I wish some bright young writer – or some bright older writer, indeed – would produce a book on the theme of ‘The Strange Death of the SDLP’. The collapse of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland is one of the major electoral events, surely, of 2017. It also seems to be…

A Continental European friend remarked to me that “Ireland is much more European than Britain – I’ve found that the Irish are much more at ease with their Continental neighbours than the British.” If this is true, it is in no small measure due to the deposit of culture built up over the centuries between…

Very few readers of The Irish Catholic will be watching season three of Twin Peaks, I suspect. It’s not on one of the main channels and it has only a cult following because its content is too surreal for most tastes. But in one recent episode we were taken back to the first test of…

Though it sounds terrible to say out loud, generally speaking, the death of a Catholic bishop doesn’t really rate as a news story anywhere outside his own diocese. Most bishops aren’t towering public personalities, and besides which, with more than 5,000 bishops in the world and an age profile that skews old, deaths just aren’t…

Miguel Diaz Epluribus unum. This motto appears in the Great Seal of the United States, the seals of top US government officials, and on US coins. While not as explicitly religious as the oft-cited motto, “In God we Trust”, this other foundational American motto not only supplies the building blocks for authentic community and human…

The complexity of adulthood inevitably puts to death the naiveté of childhood. And this is true too of our faith. Not that faith is a naiveté. It isn’t. But our faith needs to be constantly reintegrated into our persons and matched up anew against our life’s experience; otherwise we will find it at odds with…

Christopher Altieri Of all the areas that constitute proper objects of the Church’s magisterium – her official teaching office – Catholic social teaching is the one that has, without doubt, received the greatest attention and development over the past century and a half. Why is it, then, that so few Catholics seem to have heard…

The story of the workers in the vineyard is a powerful parable, and one especially apposite in these times when Pope Francis is trying to build on St John Paul’s efforts to draw back into the Church’s flock those stray sheep and lambs the Pope is tasked with tending and feeding. ‘Cradle Catholics’ and those…

Discussing the latest census data released last week, RTÉ’s George Lee said with a smile on his face that they show “people are still interested in each other but maybe in a more fluid way than the traditional way”. What did he mean? Simply this: the family based on marriage is not as strong as…