I am a firm supporter of freedom of speech and of expression. Debate is essential. Even when a saintly person is being considered for canonisation there is the tradition of ‘the devil’s advocate’ – to give a hearing to the adversarial view. Ideas have to be tested. Even wrong ideas deserve an airing because we can…

The View Amy Coney Barrett’s life should be a role model for feminists. She has a marriage where her husband, Jesse, does more of the cooking and cleaning than she does. She manages to balance a busy household of seven children, including two adopted from Haiti, with working outside the home. She is the first…

The stigmatising of unmarried mothers and their babies was wrong, but we should know that it was not confined to Ireland or Catholicism, writes David Quinn On October 30, the long-awaited report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation will be delivered to the Government. Ahead of the delivery and publication of the…

As Catholics, we have a responsibility to vaccinate, writes Ruadhán Jones The question of vaccination comes up around this time every year, but never before with such force. We are all awaiting the results of the various tests underway for a vaccine for Covid-19 with bated breath. Some 240 vaccines are in early development, with…

Border communities insist that a deal between Britain and the EU is vital for the peace process, reports Chai Brady, Ruadhán Jones and Jason Osborne The coronavirus pandemic has dominated domestic and international news for most of 2020 which has led to the overshadowing of other current events but Brexit still looms large in the…

Despite being told that there is no such thing as truth, students are told to accept theories that are younger than they are without question, writes Ronan Doheny While University College Dublin’s marketing campaign to attract new students uses the slogan ‘Think Bigger’, my experiences in UCD and Trinity College Dublin have found the opposite…

Parishes lament the absence of young people, but most are happy and do not want to be disturbed, writes Gerard Gallagher W hen Pope Francis published Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato Si’ and Amoris Laetitia there was an excessive amount of praise. It has been striking how much quieter the reception of Christus Vivit – his document…

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…