When an apparently innocuous teaching document comes out of Rome – and a Pope calling us to holiness fits that description better than most – it’s always important on the Vatican beat to ask: why this, and why now? When you apply the context lens, two recent events help answer that question. One was yesterday: Amoris…
Belief in God today is often seen as a naiveté. For many, believing in God is like believing in Santa and the Easter Bunny – nice, something for the kids, a warm nostalgia or a bitter memory but not something that’s real, that stands up to hard scrutiny and indeed stands up to the dark…
Dear Editor, The stalwarts of the prolife movement continue the fight for life on many frontlines these days and yet we still don’t see the big picture. I heard a discussion the other day which made me jump; it was not focused on the numbers aborted or the horrifying array of methods or the blindness…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough Some three weeks ago a supermarket in the small town of Trèbes in the southwest of France, became a scene of terror. An armed man, Redouane Lakdim, claiming to act in the name of Islam, entered the shop, shot a worker and a customer, and took a hostage,…
The View The view that an unborn child has the right to life is a view which is shared by millions across the world. You would not think so, listening to some of the media in Ireland at the moment. As long ago as 1924, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child…
Growing up in Dublin in the 1950s and 60s, I never heard the word ‘rape’. That is not to deny the reality of sexual assault – we know that it can occur in all societies. But the older women in my family, and the various teachers, neighbours and friends with whom I came in contact…
Speaking one’s mind can be both controversial and compelling, writes David Quinn Recently I came across for the first time an interpretation of why the Jews spent 40 years in the desert before finally arriving at the Promised Land. It was to “purify them” of the slave mentality. I then found this is a…
The ban on women’s ordination is not based on theological speculation, but on the Apostolic tradition of the Church, writes Fr Vincent Twomey SVD On the Feast Day of our national Saint, the Irish Independent published a two-page article by management consultant Eddie Molloy: ‘Church must face appalling vista of its abominable treatment of…
The theory of relativity tells us that space and time are not what they appear to be. They’re relative, meaning that don’t always function in the same way and they aren’t always experienced in the same way. Time can stand still. Or can it? This side of eternity, it would seem not. Ever since the…
Senator Catherine Noone is the Fine Gael politician who chaired the Oireachtas committee on abortion. She has been described in the Irish Independent as having a “colourful career”. As well as her advocacy for abortion, Ms Noone has taken up causes as diverse as the regulation of ice cream vans and expressed her disappointment that…
Austen Ivereigh
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Nuala O’Loan
Mary Kenny
David Quinn
Michael Kelly