A recent announcement by The Pillar, a US online Catholic publication, caught my eye. It already offers what it calls ‘indefinite maternity leave.’ It keeps paying for  maternity leave until the mom is ready to return to work. It is now going to commit to paying 75% of all employee family adoption costs, and of…

Reading Robert Fisk’s posthumously released book, Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East, I was struck by something he said in the whistlestop tour chapter of the last century’s history of Israel and Palestine. Speaking on this particular subject, he observed “Anyone who tries to tell what he or she believes is the…

When Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly reflects on Ireland’s missionary tradition, he sees a great line of continuity. “There was a time when we sent missionaries to the four corners of the earth,” he told The Irish Catholic. “One of the strongest things we can ask of people. Be part of our own family of the baptised.…

If you’re not free to practice your faith, all other rights evaporate too writes Michael Kelly In just four years, 2029, Ireland will mark the bicentenary of Catholic Emancipation. I write that more in hope than expectation, since the signals from official Ireland are not promising. When the Programme for Government was launched last year,…

There is a ceasefire finally in effect in the Gaza Strip, where Israel launched a horrific military campaign in response to attacks on the country’s south on October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas fighters and their fellow militants assaulted Israeli settlements and fortified military outposts. They killed around 1,200 people, and over 251 others…

I once knew a widowed lady who was the mother of two unmarried sons. Both lived with her until the day she died in her nineties. Since they were infants, their mother did everything possible for them. She cooked their food, washed their clothes and did for adult men what they should have learned to…

I have sometimes been asked by people in Britain: why are the Irish the most passionately pro-Palestinian of any nation? Why has Gaza been so central, even obsessive, to Irish politics, discourse and public demonstration? Gaza has taken more time in the Oireachtas than any other issue touching overseas policy. It has been a central…

Northern Ireland can no longer be viewed as consisting of two groups, religiously speaking, namely the Catholic and the Protestants. What must also be added into the mix are the non-religious, who are growing in number. This is one of the main findings of a major new poll on attitudes to religion in the North.…