The US Vice-President J.D. Vance and his wife Usha have recently welcomed the birth of their fourth child. Yet American fertility as a whole continues to plummet. It’s down to an average of 1.6 infants per woman, with a marked trend, as elsewhere, towards the one-child family. Meanwhile, in China, society is coping with the…
My cousins in the Bordeaux region have been told to stay away from their home until these terrible wildfires – and the destruction and poisonous smoke they’ve caused – have receded. Appropriately, the scenes in south-western France, and Spain have been called ‘apocalyptic’. And in this summer of extreme heatwaves, climate change sceptics are being…
There are not 800 bodies in a septic tank in the grounds of the old children’s home at Tuam. The nuns did not kill the babies or deliberately neglect them to death. In fact, the nuns ran the home about as well as they could under very difficult circumstances given the poverty of the time…
Almost a third of the participants were young at the recent excellent Logos Scripture Summer School organised by Petra Conroy and taught by Fr Terence Crotty OP in the Cistercian Abbey Guesthouse, Roscrea. Not only that, but the majority of participants in their twenties and thirties were male. This chimes with a recent trend of…
The first Irishman to make pilgrimage to Bethlehem was St Cathal in the seventh century and, though the Church of the Nativity has not substantially changed since then, tourists and pilgrims are now rarer than white blackbirds. When I recently visited the church where Jesus was born for three days in a row, the only…
Rumour has it that young people are returning to the Church. Whether this claim is true is open to debate, but one thing remains clear: spirituality has by no means disappeared. People worldwide still desire to live a life with a power greater than themselves, however, its meaning has migrated from following a religion to…
Some musicians such as Bono (and Roy Orbison in the past) are never seen without sunglasses and have popularised wearing them. While from a medical point of view this popularising is great for eyecare, it may seem sunglasses are a fashion item and not an absolute necessity for the good of one’s eyes. It is…
The recent Dáil vote to advance the Sinn Féin Bill to eliminate the three-day wait between the first contact and follow up for proceeding to procure a miscarriage (an abortion) has once again catapulted this issue into the mainstream of political discussion. Sinn Féin has long considered this a matter of political expediency; one to…
Faith, spirituality and climate leadership at a critical moment When Laudato Si’ Movement participated in the recent Austrian World Summit in Vienna, it was more than another stop on the global climate calendar. It was a powerful sign of something deeper taking place: faith, spirituality and moral values are moving closer to the centre of…
Challenging secular anthropology on human dignity Dear Editor, The Irish Catholic (July 9) presents statements, possibly coincidental, by Bishop Doran and Archbishop Farrell, to wit “Human dignity is not given to us by the State, or by our parents. Neither the State, nor our parents, nor anybody else can take it away.” These statements challenge…
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Breda O'Brien