With a General Election coming up, various issues will come to the front of the public mind and one of them is bound to be immigration. It has been arguably the main topic of debate in the country for the last year or so and therefore it is fitting that the bishops have produced a…
Responding to criticism that he failed to show up for a discussion on Friday for members of the Synod of Bishops that was to include the question of female deacons, the Vatican’s doctrinal czar insisted Monday that Pope Francis has made it clear that now is not the time to resolve that issue, but that…
What is a Co-PP? The question posed in two separate editions of The Irish Catholic over recent weeks has certainly caught the attention of priests, judging from the feedback I have received from all over Ireland. Many priests, it seems, find themselves appointed as Co-PPs and know little about what that means. One who ministers in a…
Standing on a street corner after Sunday Mass the other day, I was assailed by fury. I had joined a silent pro-life protest, organised by the Canadian parish I was visiting, and was carrying a placard that read: “Abortion kills children.” A young woman, who had stopped at the traffic lights, rolled down her window,…
Last week you may have been very impressed to see on the news footage of walking, talking, humanoid-type robots of the sort portrayed in science fiction movies down the years. The robots spoke with humans in a human-like way, carried out tasks like folding clothes, and even danced. The robots have been produced by a…
If you listened to Democratic campaigners in the US Presidential elections, late-term abortions do not happen in America, or they happen so rarely that they are not worth mentioning, or they only happen in cases of life-limiting conditions and threats to the life of the mother. Lyman Stone is a Lutheran demographer who works for…
Ireland is the host for many international priests and missionaries who come to study, either for a long period or on short trips, Fr Simon (Young) Ye Yint Naing Saw, from Myanmar, is one of those foreign priests. Fr Young lived in Knock and Portlaoise during the Summer months to improve his English, and in…
If assisted suicide is legalised in Britain, “a key protection of human life falls away”, according to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and Archbishop of Westminster. In a statement that was read to all his parishes last weekend, the English cardinal says the right to die “can become…
John Lavenburg About five months after Pope Francis spoke of the responsibility political leaders have to ensure that artificial intelligence is used ethically, the University of Notre Dame has announced that it will develop faith-based frameworks for ethical uses of the technology. Notre Dame, one of the preeminent Catholic universities in the United States located…
Notebook This month I want to share three distinct reflections with a common thread. The recent scoping enquiry into abuse perpetrated in schools run by Catholic religious orders revealed another very sad chapter in our Irish social history. The media follow up inevitably led to an avalanche of personal stories detailing the physical, emotional and…
David Quinn
Martina Purdy
Breda O'Brien
Renata Steffens