When Jorge Mario Bergoglio first appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s in March, 2013, we knew we were going to be dealing with a different style of papacy. He appeared before the world in simple white, rather than the more ornate vestments of his predecessors and gave the crowd below a simple wave. He…
A major new survey from Britain shows there is a mini-religious revival underway in that country. For the first time since anyone can remember, the survey shows that the number of young people attending church on a regular basis, that is, monthly or more, is on the increase. This challenges the long-standing idea that eventually…
One of the most hostile political parties towards the Catholic Church in Ireland today is the Social Democrats. When the announcement was made that the National Maternity Hospital was moving to a new location alongside St Vincent’s hospital, there was outrage in certain quarters because at that point St Vincent’s was still linked to the…
Tánaiste Simon Harris has come to attention of Andrew Tate of all people. You might not be familiar with who Andrew Tate is, so let me explain. He is a ‘social media influencer’ with millions of followers, overwhelmingly teenage boys and young men. He promotes an extremely aggressive form of masculinity that basically tells his…
In Leo Tolstoy’s famed novel, Anna Karenina, one of the main characters, Kitty, is heartbroken when the man she thought she was going marry, Count Vronsky, has designs on Anna instead. Kitty becomes listless and melancholic. Kitty’s family bring her to a health spa in Germany to recover, which she finally does by befriending another…
The anniversary of the two most recent referendums came and went last weekend. Do you remember them? I’m not sure you’re meant to. One was about inserting the concept of ‘durable relationships’ into the Constitution alongside marriage. The other was an attempt to remove from the Constitution the requirement that the State should seek to…
An enormous event took place in London last month that was fronted by the Canadian psychologist and academic, Dr Jordan Peterson, who has made a huge name for himself since he first emerged on to the world stage in 2016 for criticising a pro-trans ideology law in his home country. The three-day event, held under…
The war in Ukraine has now been raging for three years with hundreds of thousands dead and injured on both sides. A few weeks after the invasion began, I wrote a piece for this newspaper that I think has aged very well. I said: “Here is one very plausible scenario if peace is not arrived…
There is a fellow by the name of Marc Andreessen you have almost certainly never heard of. I hadn’t until recently. He is one of those tech wizards who are present basically at the founding of the internet when he was only in his twenties. He helped to set up one of the first big…
A major row has broken out between the Trump administration and the Catholic hierarchy in America over the issue of refugees and economic migrants. It is a row that promises to rumble on in the years to come and equally so in Europe, where immigration and asylum-seeking have become possibly the most controversial issue in…