Notebook Irish people of all stripes are aware, at least vaguely, of the achievements of the learned monks of early Christian Ireland. Comparatively few details of the monastery schools and scholars on the island of Ireland at this period are known, however, and we know a good deal more about the Irish intellectuals who rose…

Khola Hasan (pictured) is an academic lawyer and scholar at the British Islamic Sharia Council, and she caused controversy last weekend by defending the Taliban on a BBC religious programme. She said that Muslims in Britain – “every single Muslim” she knows – were celebrating the Taliban victory in Afghanistan; and that the victorious Taliban…

The View Single people have played a very important role in my life, beginning with my much-loved aunt, Kathleen O’Brien, who died at the early age of 71. Kathleen was a fascinating figure to me as a child. She had spent the years of the Second World War in Sweden as, I think, a kind…

The Church’s overseas prisoners outreach says Government must work harder to get Irish inmates repatriated, writes Michael Kelly Almost six out of ten Irish prisoners in jail overseas said that prayer and spirituality were their top ‘go to’ when it came to dealing with Covid-19 stress. The Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas – the Church’s…

The Church must reach out and be prepared to be more of a community than a building, writes Dr Gladys Ganiel Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell has made headlines with his assertion that “evidence of Christian belief in Ireland today has for all intents and purposes vanished”. Dr Farrell made the comments in an interview…

If we think we can make the world a better place, standing on the side-lines is not an option, writes David Quinn In the science fiction series, Star Trek, there is something called the ‘Prime Directive’. It instructs that no contact should be made with another civilisation until it has reached a certain level of…

Promoting a truth recovery process without fear of prosecution would provide information to the many unanswered questions of victims and their families in the North, writes Fr Aloysius G. Lumala The role of the Church in peace-making and reconciliation is based on the fact that social and political disturbances in society contradict the most fundamental…

While some studies associate religiosity with conspiracy theories, organised religion is a bulwark for reason, writes Ruadhán Jones The continuing prevalence of, even rise in, belief in conspiracy theories causes some incredulity in the intellectual elite and scientific communities. How could it be, that the age of reason has given way to an age of…

Letter from London Jonathan Luxmoore In a gallery of The British Museum, light plays on an array of medieval crosses, reliquaries and manuscripts, as an audiovisual display reenacts one of English history’s most notorious crimes. At the centre, three stained-glass windows, painstakingly transferred from Canterbury Cathedral, convey images from the fabled afterlife of St Thomas…