Category: Comment & Analysis

United Ireland — Money or vision?

The price of Irish unification has now been put at €20 billion over twenty years – the bill to be picked up by the Irish taxpayer. (Although these figures, as estimated by economist John FitzGerald, son of Garret, are disputed by some.) But as Ireland is reckoned to be one of the richest countries in…

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Rise in mental illness not all to do with social media

What is happening to a lot of our young people? The Annual General Meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation last weekend heard that in the last three decades the number of young people presenting at the Mater hospital in Dublin after self-harming has increased fivefold. Addressing the conference, Prof. Matthew Sadlier, a consultant psychiatrist, blamed…

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Pope stresses close relationship with predecessor but takes swipe at his former secretary

Pope Francis opened up about tensions between himself and the private secretary of his predecessor Benedict XVI, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who he said made things “difficult” for him. Speaking to Spanish Journalist Javier Martinez-Brocal with ABC Español, Francis addressed comparisons between himself and Benedict, saying such comparisons are normal, and that even Benedict was…

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Vatican touts ‘seamless garment’ of human dignity in new doc

In a new document published Monday, the Vatican presented a “seamless garment” approach to human dignity, uniting Pope Francis’s progressive social agenda with the traditional moral and ethical concerns of his predecessors. Closely associated with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, the “seamless garment” approach to life issues in the Church consists of a…

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If we want peace, the UN Security Council needs to go

Michael Sanfey   In a lecture delivered last month at the European University Institute in Florence, European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel referenced the importance of ‘creative destruction’, a concept associated with the Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter. It means that in a well-functioning system, productivity is boosted by the exit of inefficient…

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Ireland’s spiritual revolution born from Christ

In a recent edition of The Irish Catholic, David Quinn pondered “Where the next Easter might come from” and wrote: “We might eventually have a social revolution, one that will point us once more in a pro-life, pro-family and very possibly a pro-religion and pro-Christianity direction again” [The Irish Catholic – March 28, 2024]. Here is…

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‘Religion-free’ spaces

Visitors to Dublin Airport will be familiar with the simple yet profound message on the belltower of the on-site Catholic Church: God is love. That statement from the first chapter of the Gospel according to St John neatly encapsulates 5,000 years of salvation history. At first thought, the presence of a church at an airport,…

Diocesan shake-up: What do these changes mean?

As with most things ecclesiastical, change comes slowly and the last three papal nuncios pushed the Irish hierarchy to reduce the number of dioceses as priests numbers collapsed and attendance began to dwindle. The bishops for the most part resisted and the Vatican had a long running stand-off with them. This new nuncio, Archbishop Luis…