When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged we were repeatedly told that we must “trust the science”. There was no scope for argument. Those who questioned the construction of the new mRNA vaccines and their universal administration were ridiculed and called anti-vaxxers. Yet those vaccines did not have full approval when they were administered to millions of…
Deacon Dominic Cerrato The issue of admitting women to the diaconate has been, over the past decade, a subject of intense theological debate. In a recent interview with CBS News, Pope Francis unequivocally stated that women cannot be ordained as deacons. This stance, delivered during a ‘60 Minutes’ interview, has significant implications for ongoing discussions…
A society can best be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Unfortunately, Ireland’s current treatment of unborn children with disabilities, chiefly Down syndrome, leaves a shameful mark on our society. During the referendum campaign in 2018, government politicians and prominent Yes campaigners tried to pour cold water on entirely reasonable forecasts from…
The collapse in belief among teachers in Catholics schools offers a huge opportunity according to the Director for Outreach for Evangelisation and Discipleship with Loyola Press, Julianne Stanz, an Irish woman now living in America. Commenting on the recent Grace Report that showed that the next generation of Catholic school principals were unlikely to have…
An estimated 13-15 thousand people came to Knock on Saturday June 1 for the All Ireland Rosary Rally. Rallying calls from Dana, Maria Steen, Mickey Harte, Wendy Grace, Primate of All Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin, Bishop Phonsie Cullinan, Fr John Harris OP and many more by way of videos on social media inspired people from…
Last week the media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, released an updated draft online safety code which will now be submitted to the European Commission for assessment. The code focuses on video-sharing platforms that are headquartered in Ireland. This in itself is problematic, for example, Snapchat which is hugely popular among young people doesn’t have their…
Fr Myron J. Pereira For several decades in the last century, it was taken for granted that secularism was an important component of modernity. This was undoubtedly the inspiration behind the Constituent Assembly declaring in 1950 India a “secular republic” and not a “Hindu rashtra” (nation). How society existed yesterday… Traditionally, most societies have had…
Pope Francis condemned the recent killing of 14 Catholics in the African Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who reportedly were killed after they refused to convert to Islam. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported that the 14 Catholics, several of them very young, were killed in North Kivu by members of the ISIS-affiliated militia called the…
As I write this the Republic of India, the world’s largest democracy, is voting in a general election of a most complicated kind, with polling across the states in an extended series of ballots. This is the largest election in the world. By the time this article appears in print, unless something cataclysmic happens, and…
In 2015, the governments of Ireland and Kenya played an important role in co-facilitating the global agreement that is known as the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs as you may have heard them called The impact of the work of Ireland and Kenya together had the potential to be huge but it is starting to…
Nuala O’Loan
Eilis Mulroy
Wendy Grace
Peter Costello