Dear Editor, Halloween which stems from the Celtic festival of Samhain marking the end of harvest and the start of the Celtic New Year is almost upon us. During the night of October 31 into November 1 the barrier between the realm of the spirits and the real world grew weak. This allowed the deceased return to…
Does marriage and family life make women happier? That’s a debate going back centuries. Queen Victoria herself, though founder of a dynasty of marriages and families, opined that it was better to be happy and single than married just for the sake of wedlock. Conservative women were twice as likely to be satisfied with their…
The View This week, the Life Institute, of which I am a director, will launch its annual billboard campaign to shine a light on the appalling outcomes of Ireland’s abortion law. As the years slip by, what we know for certain is that the death toll from legalised abortion gets higher and higher. In just over three…
Churches seem to be an afterthought in the post-pandemic world, writes David Quinn Parishes, like the country in general, will have to pray hard for mild weather this winter if they are to cope with the big rise in energy costs caused chiefly by the war in Ukraine. Fortunately, the Government has allocated additional support…
Letter from USA Once again a Nobel Peace Prize was announced Friday, and once again a pope didn’t win. This year’s honour went to human rights’ campaigners in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, in what’s widely been seen as an implicit condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and both his war in Ukraine and his anti-democratic…
by Dennis Sadowski Participants at a Catholic-led conference on peace on the Korean Peninsula said it might be time to rethink how to engage with North Korea, because economic sanctions and displays of military strength have not deterred the country from aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program. Such a reset, conference speakers said, could…
If we only prayed when we felt like it, we wouldn’t pray a lot. Enthusiasm, good feelings, and fervour will not sustain anyone’s prayer life for long, good will and firm intention notwithstanding. Our hearts and minds are complex and promiscuous, wild horses frolicking to their own tunes, with prayer frequently not on their agenda.…
Dear Editor, The ongoing three-year review of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act, is most lamentable. There is a complete absence of media scrutiny. Similarly, there is no avenue to include consideration of the views of those horrified by the desperation, cruelty and ultimately the unsustainability of our country, due to our birth-rate having…
Editor’s Comment A few years ago ‘clustering’ was a word largely unknown by Catholics across Ireland. Today, parish clustering is the order of the day as it has been embraced by people within the Church as a response to the declining number of priests. I’ve often thought that clustering – joining a group of parishes…
Fr Bernard Cotter “You’re getting very big in yourself”, said the senior cleric to me, a few years after I was ordained. I had been out in the car, and so had he, and he waved at me and I hadn’t waved back. So he was letting on to be offended: I had a “big…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly