Every so often in world politics, someone comes along who is a game changer and it is very exciting to be alive to witness it – particularly when that someone (within the space of a week) manages to quote St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and Pope St John Paul II. I write of course about…
In the book of Genesis, we hear God tell Cain: “Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” And these words echo, in my own heart, each time the media revisits the assassination of John F Kennedy, whose Irish roots run deep into the soil of County Wexford. He was the first…
During my apprenticeship as a rookie journalist, many decades ago, I was taught some rudimentary rules about the law. The first was an emphasis on the difference between ‘the accused’ and ‘the convicted’. There was a sacrosanct rule in every liberal democracy that everyone has the right to be judged innocent until and unless they…
It was a simple enough question, posed by a priest who had entered religious life as a youth around 50 years ago. “What is a priest’s ‘job’?” My first thought was: bringing the body and blood of Christ to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, the greatest ‘job’ in the world. But that…
The Church presents an ideal vision of marriage but it must also minister to people in their real struggles, Chai Brady hears. As Ireland faces demographic challenges with fewer people getting married and fewer babies being born, there is an open question as to what the future may hold. A recent study by the Iona…
Over all the European countries – and North America – migration and immigration are among the most persistent topics which concern the public. In the crucial German general election, coming up on February 23, it’s the prime issue. The French are obsessed with the topic. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s ‘Reform’ party – deeply critical of…
Saturday August 15, 1998 was a glorious summer day. Like thousands of others, I will never forget it. At approximately 3.05pm that afternoon a massive terrorist bomb exploded in Omagh. Three telephone calls were made, the first at 2.29pm warning that a bomb was going to detonate in the town. Police were clearing the streets…
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…
On January 27 last, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was marked on Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a sombre annual commemoration that recalls one of the darkest periods of human history. Almost every year, the calls of ‘Never Again’ are made in speeches by political leaders and survivors. However, mature leadership must also…
Fr Hugh O’Donnell SDB The title must appear an unlikely one given that Matt left school basically illiterate. His time in St Lawrence O’Toole’s Christian Brothers’ school, aged 8/9, is summed up in the phrase, “kept home through necessity”. His next enrolment at age 11 in O’Connell’s is no brighter as there in the margin…
Maria Steen
Martina Purdy
Mary Kenny
Chai Brady
Nuala O’Loan
David Quinn