There is a good reason to treat marriage differently than other family situations, writes David Quinn In the Dáil last week, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar described the current definition of the family in the Constitution as “out-of-date”. This might surprise you. Didn’t we have a referendum on marriage in 2015 precisely to ‘modernise’ our view of…
Gloria Steinem once confessed that, while never having been overweight, she has always been concerned about her weight because the genes she inherited from her parents predisposed her in that direction. So, she says, “I think of myself as a fat woman who is slim at the moment”. Her comment helped me to understand something…
Dear Editor, Recent statements by politicians regarding Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) are very revealing. In effect they are demanding that the Government devise a RSE programme which would be imposed on all schools, irrespective of the school’s values and ethos. I wonder how they would feel if the same logic were applied to politics, i.e.,…
Growing up in the late 1980s, a staple of my childhood reading was magazines like the Far East filled with stories of the heroic work of missionaries in distant lands. I remember being enthralled by what I read about Irish priests, brothers and sisters and the risks they took in their ministry. Whether it was…
Notebook A conversation between a grandfather and his grandson went like this: “Grandad, what happens when you die?” Grandad explained as best he could. Still puzzled, the boy asked, “Does that mean you won’t be here anymore?” Grandad nodded: “Yes, that is true”. “Does that mean you won’t be able to play hurling with me…
“The rich are different,” Scott Fitzgerald famously said, and it is an observation which contains some truth. And yet when Bill and Melinda Gates announced they were proceeding towards a divorce after 27 years of marriage, others could identify with what is called the ‘silver split’ – when older couples break up having gone past…
The View For a long time now Ireland has been battling the Covid-19 pandemic and her people – north and south – have been trying to work out the implications of the UK’s Brexit vote and the NI Protocol. It was never going to be easy. Since the UK left the European Union (EU) there have…
For many people, their religious faith increased during Covid-19 restrictions, writes David Quinn We have been collectively living through the most unusual period of our lives since we went into the first lockdown in March of last year following the emergence in Wuhan, China, of Covid-19. Freedom All parts of life have been affected, including…
Letter from Rome Robert Duncan The neighbourhood of ivy-draped two-story buildings, cobblestoned streets and Marian shrines adjacent to St Peter’s Basilica is perhaps best-known today for serving gelato and pizza to tourists visiting the Vatican. History, however, knows the “Borgo” – as the zone is called by locals – as a village of ecclesiastical artisans…
China’s new regulations for religious personnel came into effect May 1, obliging those who hold any formal role in a religious group, among other things, to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and to resist foreign interference. Many Catholic observers have voiced fear the new rules not only violate China’s agreement with the Vatican…
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Nuala O’Loan