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…
Our natural instincts serve us well, to a point. They’re self-protective and that’s healthy too, to a point. Let me explain. Recently I was at a football game with a number of friends. We arrived at the game in two cars and parked in the stadium’s underground parking lot. Our tickets were in different parts…
‘Adveniat regnum tuum’ we pray in the Our Father – may your kingdom come. It is the heart of all Christian prayer since when the disciples pleaded with Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”, this is the prayer that he taught them. So, what are we praying for when we recite the Our Father? In…
Dear Editor, The Open Adoption Bill 2014 was sponsored by Anne Ferris and initiated on March 11, 2014. That Bill never progressed past stage two and has since lapsed. The Adoption (Identity and Information) Bill 2014 was sponsored by Fidelma Healy Eames, Jillian van Turnhout and Averil Power. It was initiated some four years ago…
Fr Vincent Sherlock It was one of those celebrity interviews. The interviewee was speaking about social media, his own use of it and value it has for him. He spoke too about the fears he has in maybe mistakenly using it and sending out a message that might be stupid, insensitive, mis-judged or hurtful.…
Since I have little experience of academia, I cannot say whether Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor is acting judiciously in proposing to appoint female-only chairs to universities in Ireland. Some say that a 50-50 gender distribution needs an imaginative push with affirmative action, since women aren’t, apparently, being appointed in sufficient numbers to professorships. Others say…
Mary Kenny
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly