We are not at all as European as we think. For all the talk of ‘being Europeans’ (which we clearly are), almost everyone identifies with and relates to their own country first. It is the same across the rest of Europe and next door in Britain as well. This is why we know much more…
If you hate the thought of more hate legislation, brace yourself. There’s a fresh push to deal with ‘hate crimes’ north of the border, despite controversies in the Dail and elsewhere, over this kind of law. It’s a noble aim to stamp out hatred and prejudice. But how far can the law go to achieve…
The controversy surrounding Eurovision 2024 led me to recall Fr Michael Paul Gallagher SJ’s commentary on St Paul’s visit to Athens. On arrival, St Paul “was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). Yet despite this, he searched for something in the Athenians’ worship of pagan deities that he…
Letter from Jerusalem Justin Robinson OSB I’m writing from Nablus, in the West Bank, where the Christian community has just celebrated the feast of St Justin Martyr who was born here in the year 100 AD. Nestled between the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim – some fifty kilometres north of Jerusalem – today’s Nablus is…
Letter from Rome With the imminent departure of Joseph Donnelly as the US Ambassador to the Holy See, it seems likely the post will be vacant for a while. It would make little sense to try to ram through a nominee before the election in November, and afterwards it can take a new (or returning)…
Notebook In recent weeks, I presided at the funeral of a young man who died by suicide. He was one of several who died in the same way in recent months here in the South-East. His tragic death was heart-breaking and devastating for his family. In preparing the homily for the funeral Mass, I was…
How are our teenagers faring, and more specifically, what about our 13-year-olds? This is the question examined by a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) called ‘The Changing Social Worlds of 13-Year-Olds’. Here is the short version: compared with 13-year-olds ten a decade ago, today’s 13-year-olds get on a bit better…
O’Connell Street is surely Ireland’s best-known thoroughfare, named after ‘The Liberator’, Daniel O’Connell just a hundred years ago, in 1924. How interesting to learn, from Christine Casey’s peerless architectural survey of Dublin, that the city Corporation had voted to change the name of Sackville Street 40 years previously, in 1884, but the local residents objected.…
Knock and the door shall be opened to you!” is an oft-quoted scripture. But it can be a tricky process for candidates seeking a vote at election time. An old politician’s trick, to avoid unpleasantness, was to hang back on the footpath while canvassers knocked the door. Years ago, I heard a story from a…
When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged we were repeatedly told that we must “trust the science”. There was no scope for argument. Those who questioned the construction of the new mRNA vaccines and their universal administration were ridiculed and called anti-vaxxers. Yet those vaccines did not have full approval when they were administered to millions of…
David Quinn
Martina Purdy
John L. Allen Jr.
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan