The current epidemic raises a number of profound ethical questions. We are facing unprecedented events under the pressure of time and of limited resources. In the name of urgency and necessity we are experiencing exceptional restrictions of fundamental liberties, and a significant alteration of our familiar ways of living. After the initial shock, when energies are...
By Paolo Gulisano (translation by Angelo Bottone) The current Covid-19 pandemic has become an extraordinary opportunity for the dissemination of the culture of death. This is happening on a world-wide scale. In the United States, which were incomprehensibly caught “by surprise” by the arrival of the virus, many states have already announced that the cures for the Coronavirus will...
Almost one hundred priests including one bishop have died so far because of Covid-19, mostly in Italy. Many of them were infected while ministering the sick. In other words, they made the ultimate sacrifice while looking after their people, which is a priest’s highest calling. The priest acts ‘in persona Christi’ and he also laid...
The new abortion law that came into force in Northern Ireland on Tuesday is so extreme than it is even more permissive than the current legislation valid for the rest of the United Kingdom, or in the Republic. The horrible irony is that while the North attempts to save people from Covid-19, this law will...
During a medical crisis everyone should be focused on saving lives, particularly the Minister for Health. Still, some TDs have tried to use the emergency legislation recently discussed in the Oireachtas to expand access to abortion even further, while Minister Harris has introduced a new and substantial change in the interpretation of the current abortion...
As we watch hospitals all over the world cope with coronavirus, their existence is something we completely take for granted. We assume that every culture, left to its own devices, will naturally develop hospital systems in the course of time. But this is simply not true. They are chiefly a legacy of Christianity. They arose...
In a well-reasoned article in the Irish Times last Saturday, Maria Steen sets out what many would consider the self-evident truth that the feminist movement prioritises the empowerment of women in the workplace over motherhood. Hot-foot on the article’s heels came a self-important, hectoring, name-dropping letter to the paper, blusteringly denouncing Maria for visiting her...
In the middle of the current crisis, it is easy to miss other stories. One is that we have had a bad few days for freedom of conscience, speech and association in various parts of Europe. For example, on March 12th last week, both the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court...
Do men and women seek the same kind of work/home balance? The answer is emphatically not, and public policy ought to take this into account. A new poll finds that 61pc of Irish mothers with children aged 18 or under want to work part-time, compared with just 29pc of Irish fathers. That is a difference...
A new U. N. report on freedom of religion is actually a headlong attack on that same freedom in the name of “reproductive and sexual rights”. It makes no mention of the persecution of religious believers, it attacks the conscience rights of pro-life medical workers, it references female genital multilation almost in the same breath...
