The voices of people opposed to the introduction of assisted suicide must be fairly heard, the chair of a Government committee discussing the topic has insisted. Chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on assisted suicide, Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae, told The Irish Catholic newspaper that it’s of “vital importance” that this committee does its work “in an…
Pro-life politicians have criticised a review into the State’s abortion law that contains recommendations to implement drastic changes, such as the removal of the three-day waiting period and decriminalisation of doctors acting outside of the abortion law. Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, independent Laois-Offaly TD Carol Nolan said that the recommendations are “very worrying…
As humanity grows in knowledge, it’s possible that we will forget the humbling and essential role of mystery in life, writes Jason Osborne Existence itself is a mystery, so it should come as no surprise that our lives are full of mystery too. By the grace of God, we Catholics know a great many things…
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire,” our saint of the week is regularly quoted as saying. St Catherine of Siena certainly lived according to that maxim, so much so that not only is she a saint, she’s recognised as an esteemed ‘Doctor of the Church’ and…
It might seem an obvious thing now, what with so much talk about the environment and “going green,” but humans have taken many approaches to the natural world throughout history. Sometimes, even when we talked a good game, our actions belied that we viewed the created world as something to be plundered, used and abused,…
The precarious state of South Africa’s electricity grid, which sees regular “planned and controlled” shutdowns of parts of the grid so as to avoid a national blackout, has led to a “depressed” people an Irish archbishop living there has claimed. Speaking to The Irish Catholic about the controversial “load shedding” practice, Archbishop Liam Slattery OFM…
Learning to live and celebrate this Easter season confers many benefits on us, writes Jason Osborne Many of us are better at being penitential than we are at celebrating, unfortunately. As Pope Francis said way back in 2013, “sometimes these melancholic Christians’ faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having…
The recent Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) conference saw delegates criticise “insensitive comments” made by school management bodies expressing opposition to teaching controversial gender ideology. Early March saw the Catholic Primary School Management Association (CPSMA) say that teaching primary school students about transgenderism “would be counterproductive, generating unnecessary divisions in school communities” and that it…
Most of us are familiar with that famous image of a heavenly knight plunging his spear into a serpentine creature, even if we’re not overly familiar with the mysterious hero it represents. That would be St George, who is venerated far and wide to this day, despite the lack of concrete detail we have on…
If you’re at all like me, the Easter Triduum through which we’ve just passed has proven confusing at some point. We’re told Christ dies on Good Friday, and three days later, he rises again from the dead. First of all, Friday to Sunday isn’t three days by our modern reckoning. Secondly, the space between Christ’s…