Michael D. Higgins is a very popular president, and I think there’s a special reason why he is well suited to the Irish temperament. Many outsiders who have observed Ireland and the Irish have remarked that a feature of Irish life is a difference between what people say in the public sphere – and what…
The View In 2018, then Tánaiste Simon Coveney said that he was willing to support repeal of the 8th amendment and legalisation of abortion on demand to 12 weeks because he had been assured there would be “strict guidelines”, including a three-day waiting period for women to reflect on the decision before they underwent an abortion.…
An immediate scaling up of aid is now the only hope to avoid starvation for hundreds of thousands of people, writes Liam Fitzpatrick Forty-eight seconds. In the time it takes to brew a cup of coffee, one person in the Horn of Africa is likely dying of hunger in one of the most severe humanitarian…
Even before Pope Francis stages his latest consistory on August 27, inducting 20 new members into the Catholic Church’s most exclusive club, the event has managed to make news – in this case, not so much for the new cardinals who’ll be there, but the one erstwhile cardinal-designate who won’t. This past Thursday, the bishops’…
Pope Francis gave the editors of 10 Jesuit magazines a glimpse into how he makes decisions, background on one of his more controversial comments about the war in Ukraine and insight into what he sees as the refusal of some bishops to accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Meeting in May with the…
Margaret Atwood once wrote that sometimes a thing needs to be said, and said, and said again, until it doesn’t need to be said anymore. That’s why I write a column annually on suicide, mostly saying the same things over and over again. The hope is that, like a note put into a bottle and…
Editor’s Comment Voters in Colombia took to the polls at the weekend and in so doing elected that country’s first left-wing president. Gustavo Petro, the former mayor of the capital Bogota, is also an ex-paramilitary. His background as someone who took up arms against the government is attracting a lot of media attention internationally –…
Dear Editor, So the Church needs to change with regard to its obvious discrimination towards LGBT people? This charge is levelled against the Church without any specificity about the nature of this discrimination. So is this charge of a ‘homophobic’ Church justified? Is it not Church teaching that the homosexual person should be accepted with…
Notebook I’m on the move. After a ten-year sojourn in Newcestown and Farnivane, I’ll be calling in the movers shortly. Objection is futile at this stage: how fortunate was I to spend ten years here. I am not the only Cork and Ross priest to be moved this year. Some think that almost all will have…
The idea of same-sex marriage was only seriously suggested in the 1990s, and one of the earliest advocates for this cause was the Catholic conservative journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan. At first, the gay community was divided about same-sex marriage – and some are still opposed to it” Mr Sullivan, who is from an Irish…
Mary Kenny
John L. Allen Jr.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly