The Green Party’s proposal of a one-off child benefit payment of €560 for parents in the first month their child is born has met a surprising amount of opposition. Their coalition partners object because it breaches the terms of the Summer Economic Statement, which sets out spending limits for the budget. Others feel that it…
Thomas O’Reilly A four-day visit to Belgium by Pope Francis acted as the perfect bellwether in what many regard as Western Europe’s most secular country as greater than-expected numbers flocked to see the Pontiff, dissuaded by showery weather and a last-minute attempt by political elites to dredge up abuse scandals. In the first papal visit…
Pope Francis received ‘a frosty welcome’ at the Catholic University of Louvain for his praise for the role of motherhood in history, adding “what is characteristic of women, what is feminine is not determined by consensus or ideologies. It is not written on paper, but in the flesh.” Louvain expressed ‘incomprehension and disapproval’ at Francis’s…
Letter from Rome Fans of the Roma soccer team, one of the two professional squads in the Eternal City, are in a grumpy mood these days. In part that’s because of the team’s uneven performance, but even more so because of perceived mismanagement by its American owners, Texas billionaire Dan Friedkin and his son Ryan.…
Notebook The driver was not having a good day! First he was annoyed by two children on bicycles and then was seriously irked by an elderly driver whose car stalled at traffic lights and, to cap it all, another motorist made it almost impossible for him to overtake. The children, the elderly driver and the…
It’s certainly a welcome development that Justice Minister Helen McEntee is to drop her proposed “hate speech” legislation. It would have led to all kinds of prying actions by the State into our private lives and opinions. It would have been a harness on freedom of speech, and perhaps ideas. And since Catholic values are…
Surrogacy in Ireland was legalised in June with virtually no critical media scrutiny. Even when the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission’s (IHREC) Third Annual Report on Human Trafficking strongly criticised part of the legislation, serious and concerning issues remain quietly buried. IHREC Commissioner, Ms Noeline Blackwell, explained on a recent Morning Ireland programme that the…
A professor at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium has claimed the university is intentionally downplaying a looming visit by Pope Francis, driven by anger over sexual abuse scandals as well as “shame” about Catholic identity and a “business and marketing logic” which views being identified with the institutional Church as potentially detrimental to…
Letter from Rome While offering an overall positive judgment on the Marian apparitions and devotions associated with the Medjugorje phenomenon in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Vatican nevertheless said in a new document released Thursday that some issues still need to be clarified. The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) presented the document, titled ‘The…
Notebook As I write these words, two events coincide – the first, the re-opening of old wounds following the publication of the ‘Scoping Report’ into historical abuse in religious-run schools and the visit to Ireland of the relics of St Bernadette of Lourdes. Is this a coincidence and what does one have to do with…
Mary Kenny
John L. Allen Jr.
Breda O'Brien