Category: Opinion

Prostitution: Compassion, yes – Normalisation, no

There is a long Christian tradition – rooted in the Gospels – of showing compassion for women who work as prostitutes. Christian women and early feminists took up this cause in the 19th century – the anti-slavery Christian campaigner Josephine Butler sheltered prostitutes, and halted young girls from being trafficked into prostitution, too. Compassion and…

More than just the workload

Relentless Ministry For many priests, some of the most draining moments of their ministry are encounters with Catholics who approach faith and parish as a resource to be used, Fr Chris Hayden writes. The concept of ‘relentless ministry’ is not without limitations. It’s an entirely valid notion, of course, and if I were to suggest…

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Government policy driving the housewife to extinction

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…

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An Post is bringing the snakes back to Ireland

Letters   Dear Editor,  The snakes are back! Poor St Patrick, even after driving out the snakes of pre-Christian paganism, here, they reappear, in the form of our annual An Post, contribution for the feast or rather now, the festival of St Patrick’s Day, as they call it. They are multicoloured and long. What is…

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A CHANGE OF ERA ONLY FOR THE WOMEN?

Five words, delivered during a homily on Ash Wednesday, have never entirely left me: “You all have to change,” the priest declared rather prophetically on March 6, 2019. He did not know that four women in our Falls Road congregation had been told the previous night that their vocation as Sisters of Adoration was over.…

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