Feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare – Naomh Bríd – (c. 450 – 525) one of Ireland’s patron saints. She was an early Irish Christian nun, abbess, and foundress of several monasteries of nuns, including that of Kildare, which was famous and revered. Her feast day is shared by Dar Lugdach, who tradition says was […]
Thomas MacDonagh was born in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, to Joseph MacDonagh, a schoolmaster, and Mary Parker. He grew up in a household filled with music, poetry and learning and was instilled with a love of both English and Irish culture from a young age. A member of the Gaelic League, he was a teacher and […]
A landmark ruling has recognised the right for German pharmacists to refuse to sell the so-called morning after pill (MAP) on grounds of conscience. No such right has ever been recognised in Ireland. The drug is used as a post-coital contraceptive but, when conception occurs, it also prevents implantation in the uterine wall, causing the […]
In a tragic reminder that surrogacy is not only morally fraught, but dangerous, a San Diego wife and mother of two has died giving birth to a baby for another couple. Michelle Reaves was acting as a surrogate mother for the second time for the same family when she died on January 15. Apparently she was the […]
ON THIS DAY: Bloody Sunday – 14 civilians were shot dead on the streets of Derry by British soldiers on 30th January 1972. They had been taking part in a march against internment. Patrick Doherty (31) Was shot from behind as he attempted to crawl to safety from the forecourt of Rossville Flats. He […]
My 6 year-old son has autism and spiky blond hair which won’t stay flat. He loves dinosaurs, and he says he’d rather be cute than strong. He’s a divil, like most kids his age, for eating cake and bouncing on beds, and he has a strange fascination with peeling onions. He can’t see an onion […]
The debate over abortion is not just about women’s reproductive rights. It is also about science. And none of these debates is more heated than foetal pain. Many contend that the upper time limit for abortion should be 20 weeks, as from then on, it can feel pain. Mother Jones – not a scientific journal, mind […]
The haunting old Irish air, Lament for Staker Wallace, rang out in Kilmainham Gaol on Sunday, the majestic sound of uilleann pipes drawing out the old ghosts of this historic building where the 1916 leaders were imprisoned and executed. Famed Wexford piper Mark Redmond was playing no ordinary pipes however: these were the set owned […]
On September 19, 2019, at the fourteenth annual Gala for Western Civilization, ISI presented Sir Roger Scruton with the Defender of Western Civilization award. Sir Roger gave these remarks on accepting the award. It is a great honor to be named Defender of Western Civilization for the year 2019 by ISI, an organization with which […]
The Canadian province of Quebec will expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia to include people with severe and incurable mental illness, says Health Minister Danielle McCann. The guidelines will be drafted by the Quebec college of physicians. Both the minister and the college believe that few people would be affected. “We don’t expect many of these patients […]
Not long ago, the gay rights movement was a small group of people struggling to follow their dispositions within a larger heterosexual culture. Gays and lesbians were underdogs, vastly outnumbered and loosely organized, sometimes subject to discrimination and abuse. Their story was tragic, their suffering dramatized by AIDS and Rock Hudson, Brokeback Mountain and Matthew […]
Climate scientists generally believe that man-made impacts on global climate can only be practically detected in climate records since around 1950, as our CO2 emissions were comparatively very small before then. Figure 1 below shows this very clearly with over 86% of total estimated CO2 emissions since around 1950. Whenever the media report on climate […]