Pope Francis received ‘a frosty welcome’ at the Catholic University of Louvain for his praise for the role of motherhood in history, adding “what is characteristic of women, what is feminine is not determined by consensus or ideologies. It is not written on paper, but in the flesh.” Louvain expressed ‘incomprehension and disapproval’ at Francis’s…
It’s certainly a welcome development that Justice Minister Helen McEntee is to drop her proposed “hate speech” legislation. It would have led to all kinds of prying actions by the State into our private lives and opinions. It would have been a harness on freedom of speech, and perhaps ideas. And since Catholic values are…
We live at a time when public scandals appear so ubiquitous that their shock value seems diminished; yet the case of Huw Edwards, the BBC newsreader convicted this week of viewing child pornographic images, has had a huge impact in Britain. It’s the fact that Edwards was such a decent, reassuring, familiar face in every…
How thought-provoking it is now to turn over the pages of the renowned Dictionary of Irish Biography (published by the Royal Irish Academy) and note how frequently Irish religious schools have been mentioned with honour. Almost all of the revolutionary generation men were educated by priests and brothers; and even among noteworthy Irishmen who died…
Perhaps this is the kind of conversation that must often take place in private. Recently, a friend reflectively aired this thought, “with so much contraception now available, one must wonder why Irish abortion figures continued to rise.” There were 10,033 abortions in the Irish Republic in 2023, increased from 8,156 in 2022 and 6,577 in…
Ireland is partitioned politically – but there are also cultural divisions north and south. And one of the significant national achievements of journalist and feminist campaigner, Nell McCafferty, who died recently, aged 80, was that she was equally recognised, and equally relatable, north and south. The Derrywoman’s reputation went across 32 counties. Many accolades have…
When Maud Gonne MacBride – our national icon, and forever muse to Yeats – attended a socialist political meeting in London in her youth, she was dismayed by the outcome. After being addressed by Scots socialist leader Keir Hardie, the crowd of trade unionists and fiery socialists assembled in Trafalgar Square affirmed their commitment to…
What does it mean to be Irish today? In the increasingly multi-ethnic nation that Ireland now is, that’s a question that will be pondered over. Olympic athletes like Rhasidat Adeleke and Daniel Wiffen demonstrated that a person representing Ireland may now have come from backgrounds not traditionally rooted in Ireland. (Wiffen’s family were from Yorkshire,…
Celebrities can often shine a light on a personal, or social, problem, and bring more focus to a troubling issue. And this, it seems, is what Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, intends when she speaks about suicide. She has been publicly reflecting on her own experience of having suicidal thoughts when she was expecting her first…
Sport is one of those activities that I greatly approve of in theory, but, alas, in practice, find mostly rather boring. I applaud the wonderful principles behind that motto so often advanced in times gone by – notably by the religious orders in education – mens sana in corpore sano: a healthy mind in a…