In a speech delivered yesterday, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that progression through the five three-week phases is “not guaranteed” however, and will depend on whether the outbreak is contained.
In February 2020, in the middle of the first wave of coronavirus infections in China, Hong Kong’s emeritus bishop Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun visited the United States and spoke with members of Congress. Cardinal Zen, a vocal supporter of Hong Kong’s democratic movement and a passionate defender of the underground Catholic church, painted a […]
Could the Church hierarchy be cosying up to the Chinese Communist Party? Ben Scallan comments #gript
Today’s verdict however is a vindication of Pell, one that any person who cherishes the right to a fair trial should welcome.
As everyone knows, mostly because it’s the subject of endless, fawning news reporting, former President Mary McAleese has been busy bashing the Catholic Church recently while also being nominated as Chancellor of Trinity College. She might have been surprised, then, to see an article in the University Times take her to task in the most strident […]
The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has had several decades of bad press, and scandals, which have resulted in widespread public alienation and falling mass attendances. Those who have kept faith with it during these hard decades cannot be accused of swimming with the cultural, or political tides. The Church in Ireland is resolutely on […]
Over 245 million Christians are living in places where they experience high levels of persecution, while 4,305 Christians were killed because of their faith from 2017 to 2019, and 1,847 Churches and other Christian building were attacked in that period. They are just some of the figures being highlighted by the Persecuted and Forgotten report from Aid to the Church […]
Parsing a non-story in Saturday’s Irish Independent tells us a sad and genuine story about the state of the conscience of our nation. But it needs parsing. The paper reported on what was essentially a non-issue – they as good as said so, but still had to give us about 700 words – about the […]
Student rioters are said to be responsible for the looting of a Catholic Church in Santiago, Chile, after three weeks of protests against an increase in living costs in the country.
Mary McAleese’s criticism of the Catholic Church (‘Women the Vatican Couldn’t Silence’, Trinity College 2/11/2019) is largely about attacking ‘strawmen’ targets. She had strong words for ‘cowardly’ prelates. Yet, the two she mentioned, according to Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times, could hardly be described as ‘cowardly’. Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan took a bold step against […]
Arlene Foster has announced her support for a return to power-sharing in Stormont, a move echoed by the leaders of the four main churches in the north who say politicians must stop an “almost unregulated abortion regime” being imposed on the province by Westminster on October 22nd.
Senator Ivana Bacik has recently argued in a piece she called “The Catholic Church hasn’t gone away, you know” that what she calls a “secularist” approach to separation of Church and State would help to remedy a situation in which the Catholic Church in Ireland “influence(s) public policy” through its religious teachings, runs a “shadow […]