Letter from Rome After 20 years of restoration work and millions in funding from benefactors worldwide, the unveiling of the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs in Rome was supposed to be a grand, celebratory moment slated for this spring, in time for Holy Week and Easter. The public was going to be able to…
According to an Armenian archbishop, Turkey is perpetrating a “third genocide” against the oldest Christian nation in the world. He claims Turkey is using Azerbaijan to attack the Christian community in Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region of Azerbaijan that has been a de facto independent state since the 1990’s. Recent fighting in the region has seen its churches…
Looking at our world today, what frightens and unsettles me more than the threat of the Covid-19 virus, more than the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, more than the dangers of climate change, and even more than the bitter hatred that now separates us from each other, is our loss of any…
Dear Editor, It is ironic that the so-called Dying with Dignity bill was introduced into the Dáil during palliative care week. Several professionals from the hospice and palliative care sector have warned that this bill is a ‘Trojan horse’ which will ruin our current gold standard of end of life care, where the patient, family…
Notebook I was in your house the day they brought you home. I watched your two-year-old sister and wondered what was going through her mind. I saw your mother, glad to be home but tired too, having carried you so lovingly, through those long months of waiting, and now sharing you with a world that,…
Among the new restrictions announced by Taoiseach Micheál Martin this week was a limit of ten people at a funeral in the Republic. In the North, funerals are limited to 25. The restriction to ten people at a funeral was cruel and – mercifully – quickly changed. At the same time that only ten people…
One of the most mendacious aspects of the Dying with Dignity bill, it seems to me, is calling it ‘dying with dignity’. It is an assisted suicide measure, and if truth meant anything in the public realm, that is what it should be called. ‘Dying with dignity’ is a propaganda phrase which deliberately implies that…
The View Last week the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference published a message to the Faithful entitled ‘Do not lose heart’. A day later it was reported that the four Catholic archbishops of Ireland had requested a meeting with the Taoiseach to address the current restrictions that prevent the celebration of public masses. The news gave…
Nothing has had a more formative influence upon Ireland and Europe than Christianity, writes David Quinn State-run secondary schools are set to end a policy of Christian-only symbols on their walls, put the celebrations of other religions on a par with Christian celebrations such as Christmas, and end compulsory attendance at school Masses. The news…
Medicine traditionally recognises that human life is a basic good, and that patients come to doctors for healing and the restoration of health, writes Fr Seán MacGiollarnáth O. Carm. In 1997, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and other philosophers submitted a brief to the US Supreme Court which called for assisted suicide. Paul Weithman, their colleague,…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Maria Steen
David Quinn