It is not that long since divorce was not permitted in Ireland at all. The State followed the view of the Catholic Church that marriage should be permanent and indissoluble. This was a country with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, and so when a referendum to make divorce legal was first put to the country in…
If a woman has not had her first child by the time she is 30, statistically, she has only a 50% chance of ever having a baby. It’s a shocking fact that we can no longer ignore. We find ourselves in a space where couples experience involuntary childlessness, i.e. those who always wanted children but…
There is a real prospect of pro-life gains in the upcoming elections, writes Eilís Mulroy Before voters go to the polls in Irish elections, the Pro Life Campaign has, for many years now, published a ‘Voter Guide’ with a comprehensive list of candidates and where they stand on right-to-life issues. As well as being an…
Last Friday, the Vatican rolled out a new expedited procedure for vetting alleged Marian apparitions or other spiritual phenomenon, ruling that they will no longer deemed supernatural, but simply that nothing stands in the way of encouraging devotion. In an introductory presentation of the new norms, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for…
A few years ago I was free. I had no house. No wife. No baby. I had all the freedom in the world. In the last few years my life has been colonised. Taken over. My freedom is gone. I have responsibilities and commitments. Decisions I make are no longer taken with my own interests…
Letter from Jerusalem Justin Robinson OSB Easter is a time of hope, something which has occupied me a lot lately as the season comes to a close and my three-year sojourn in a war-torn Holy Land comes to an end. We hope for things all the time. I have a long-standing hope that Middlesbrough FC…
Not long after I quit the BBC for the convent, a few of my former colleagues came around for tea and biscuits. So for a bit of craic, I wheeled the convent tea trolley into the parlour and did my best Mrs Doyle accent: “You will, you will, you will!” We all enjoyed the joke!…
Notebook All the talk and coverage around the Eurovision contest over the last few weeks, brought me back to my youth. I remember sitting at home with my mother, watching the black and white television when Dana won the Eurovision in 1970 from Amsterdam. Only when I looked it up on the internet this week…
People have been so distracted by the witchy elements of Ireland’s 2024 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest that they have often overlooked the fact that the key religious symbolism in Bambie Thug’s on-stage and off-stage performance relates to the new belief system of gender identity. Her act for Doomsday Blue blends gender identity belief…
Recently in The Irish Catholic, Fr Niall Leahy SJ mentioned the desire to focus on ministry to young people as one of the reasons that Gardiner Street would no longer function as a parish within the Archdiocese of Dublin. The Jesuits are to be commended for taking this step as young adults are so neglected…
David Quinn
Wendy Grace
Eilis Mulroy
Martina Purdy
Breda O'Brien