Des Hanafin will have been an extremely familiar figure to many of the readers of this newspaper down the years. He was a long-serving Fianna Fáil Senator and a founder and the long-time Chairman of the Pro-Life Campaign. Des died last week, aged 85. He had been unwell for a long time but was still…
While it’s probably too much to say that Pope Francis has an explicit ‘Swedish strategy’, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Sweden has both a place in the Argentine Pope’s heart and a role to play in his vision of a ‘Church of the Peripheries’. In some ways, the plates had already been shifting in the…
Dear Editor, The recent media and political reports about the young pregnant mother detained under the Mental Health Act 2001 show a large lack of knowledge of what suicidal ideation is and how mental health law works around it. If any person arrives to A&E in an actively suicidal state they are assessed quickly and…
When was the last time you saw a priest portrayed positively on television or in the cinema? The question from a friend of mine struck a chord with me. And, after a few minutes, I had to admit I couldn’t think of a recent example. It got me thinking about the fact that when I…
Four years of Pope Francis notwithstanding, it remains generally true in Europe that the more overtly Catholic a political party is, the more likely it is to advocate a restrictive line on immigration. That’s the case with the Law and Justice party in Poland, for instance, as well as Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary,…
An announcement last Wednesday night, drowned in the saturation coverage of London’s appalling tower-block fire, deserved not just to make the news but to trigger a national examination of conscience. Sadly, it hasn’t. Tim Farron, an evangelical Christian, decided to stand down as leader of Britain’s third party, the Liberal Democrats, because “to be a…
Charity is about being good-hearted, but justice is about something more. Individual sympathy is good and virtuous, but it doesn’t necessarily change the social, economic and political structures that unfairly victimise some people and unduly privilege others. We need to be fair and good of heart, but we also need to have fair and good…
Bro. Conor McDonough Not all public voices in Ireland want to consign the Church to “the dustbin of history”, as at least one of our elected representatives apparently does, but many want it to stay behind the four walls of the church building. Many believers too, perhaps humiliated by very real scandals within the Church,…
Dear Editor, I read Bishop Denis Brennan’s comments on a vocation being “an adventure” with interest (IC 15/06/2017). Other newspapers who had covered Bishop Brennan’s homily at the ordination in Horeswood, Co. Wexford, had only mentioned his comments warning the new priest about having the “anger/hostility people have for the Church in general directed at…
I’m a great admirer of temperance movements and the positive message they have to impart: you can have the greatest fun without getting plastered. Not only can you enjoy life to the fullest – you can even remember what you enjoyed! And yet I also learned from a tolerant point made by Alcoholics Anonymous: most…
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.
Michael Kelly
Austen Ivereigh
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny