Freedom of conscience is a human right and should not be thwarted by any government or body, writes Dr Aisling Bastible Hundreds of general practitioners from all over the country attended an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) held by the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) in Malahide at the weekend. They were hoping to…
What’s still unfinished in your life? Well, there’s always a lot that’s unfinished in everyone’s life. Nothing is ever really finished. Our lives, it seems, are simply interrupted by our dying. Most of us don’t complete our lives, we just run out of time. So, consciously or unconsciously, we make a bucket-list of things we…
Minister for Health Simon Harris is part of a breed of politicians who get into the game at a young age. He has never had a job outside of politics. Before running for election himself, he served as an assistant to Francis Fitzgerald. At the tender age of 25, Mr Harris was elected to the…
Black Friday is the new December 8! For many years there was a great Irish tradition of the pre-Christmas shopping season beginning on the Holy Day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. People from all over the country would flock to Dublin or their nearest shopping town to take in the festive atmosphere.…
Dear Editor, I am very dismayed about a letter published last week (IC 29/11/18) which said that high profile human welfare charities are addicted to their public self-importance. The author, John Tierney, concluded: “But we must never forget the adage; charity should be given without being asked for.” I think this perspective is very cynical…
President Michael D. Higgins spoke last weekend about the “scourge” of violence against women – there is a global campaign this week and next to halt this horrible offence. Who would disagree with him, or the purpose of the campaign? Gender-based violence – sometimes called domestic abuse, since it often takes place in the home…
The View Being Catholic means being neither right-wing nor left-wing. It means embracing the social teaching on the Church on major issues and using prudential judgement in less important areas. There is a growing phenomenon of young men and some young women who tend to be right-wing economically but also to oppose abortion. Let’s…
It is essential for the doctors of today to fight for the rights of the doctors of tomorrow, writes Dr Keith Holmes Several generations past in Ireland, the vast majority of doctors were Catholics who came from Catholic families; if, as students, they wished to go to Trinity College, then various ecclesiastical permissions had…
There must be a right to share the Good News in a peaceful way, writes David Quinn Let’s suppose for the sake of the argument that somewhere in deepest, darkest Ireland explorers stumbled across an undiscovered tribe of Irish people still living in the Stone Age. The question would immediately arise, what should we…
The Pope has raised the stakes for February’s Church summit on abuse, writes Christopher White In the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, which chronicled the Boston Globe’s devastating reporting on the first wave of the clerical sex abuse crisis in the US, one of the reporters remarks that “the Catholic Church thinks in centuries”. When Cardinal…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn