On Saturday October 11th, The Iona Institute held its third annual youth conference. This year, the theme was Does Gen Z Have a Future Without Religion? In his address, Fr Conor McDonough OP, a popular Dominican friar who is also active on social media, looks at something unexpected: the quiet reawakening of faith among Gen...
Well-known religious affairs commentator, Michael Kelly, recently gave a talk about Pope Leo XIV at a lunchtime event of The Iona Institute in a packed Central Catholic Library. He discussed the new pontiff’s life, his ministry and how he will respond to the challenges and opportunities currently facing the Catholic Church. He talked about the...
On Saturday May 3, 2025, Maria Steen (pictured) delivered a talk called “Evangelium Vitae at 30 – Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical on the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death”. The talk was hosted by The Iona Institute and took place in Ely House, Ely Place, Dublin 2. Evangelium Vitae (‘The Gospel of...
Dr Tim Crowley spoke on the topic of freedom of thought and speech at the Iona Institute annual youth conference. Dr Crowley in particular drew on lessons from ancient Greece, including the trial of Socrates (pictured) for defying the mores of his day, and how these lessons apply to our present situation. Dr Crowley is...
David Quinn spoke at the Iona Institute annual youth conference at the beginning of October. His talk was called ‘The state We’re In’, and looked at Church, State and society in the present day, while looking ahead to what things might look like in 2050, when most of the attendees will be middle-aged. He said...
On Saturday October 5th, The Iona Institute held its annual youth conference. The theme was ‘Whatever Happened to Tradition?‘, the title of a recent book by historian, writer, and columnist with The Daily Telegraph, Tim Stanley. Tim was the keynote speaker on the day and addressed a packed house on the theme of his book, but...
Fr Chris Hayden (pictured), Spiritual Director of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, addressed a meeting of the Iona Institute on the topic of the Catholic vision of the human person, which among other things addressed what Catholicism has to say about relationships and sexuality. Is the Catholic vision ‘repressive’ as critics say, or is it, in...
Catholic schools in Ireland are undergoing the same tremendous changes as Irish society itself. They are becoming more secular and less Catholic as the same happens to Ireland. Only a minority of teachers are practising Catholic and pupils and their parents rarely go to Mass. They are struggling to maintain a truly Catholic ethos. In...
Maria Steen addressed a meeting of The Iona Institute last month about the two upcoming referendums on the family, and carers. She told the audience: “The first proposal is to get rid of what is misleadingly referred to as the ‘woman’s place is in the home’ provision of the Constitution. (There is no such provision.) The...
On 7th October, the Iona Institute held a conference aimed at young people on the theme “Catholics in a Woke World”. These are the recordings of the talks from our conference. Dr Gerard Casey: “What is woke anyway? (Former head of the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin) Melanie McDonagh: “How...
