I was listening to the radio the other evening.  I was driving from Letterkenny to Drogheda.  There was a programme discussing discrimination against same sex attractants (homosexuals) in homes for the elderly.  The very earnest presenter, who kept referring to the GLBT community (she obviously hasn’t had the feminist wing complaining that it should be LGBT) as if it were, you know, a community, came up with the astounding statistic that “they are two and a half times more likely not to h...

The Irish Independent reports:

Within hours of the court decision paving the way for Good Friday drinking, Limerick traders rushed to cash in on the move with special T-shirts.

But the garments are sure to rile some Catholics, such as one that reads "Officially bigger than the Catholic Church, Munster Rugby".

Others produced by the Repeat Style T-Shirt shop read "Mass will now take place at Thomond Park", while two others showed showed Christ dressed in a Munster shirt and described as "The ...

Is it just me or did the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, over-react a little to comments made by the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury?

Dr Rowan Williams, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, to be broadcast on Monday, said: "I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it’s quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now.

"An institution so deeply bound into the life of a society suddenly becoming, suddenly los...

"One helpline recorded a significant increase in calls following the latest revelations.

The Rape Crisis Centre said it had to bring in extra staff to cope with the rise in calls last night."

Is is just me or is there something suspicious about the way these agencies report increases everytime something happens on the news?  Is there really a whole cohort of abused people who haven't come forward and do so after watching the rantings of Patsy McGarry or Joe Lyttle?  Though I suppose I often f...

Further news from Canada reveals that there is a more human angle to this scandal of the Ambassador's residence. 

It seems that during the work, when the walls were stripped, the water and hydro (electricity to you and me) disconnected, the windows missing, somebody thought it would be a good idea to make the housekeeper continue living there "for security reasons".  "She's from the Philippines so they're used to those sort of condidtions" said nobody in particular.

A complaint from a concerned...

The photographs, taken from 2002 to 2003, were compiled in a four-year project that involved 20 computers running s...

Not one to blow my own trumpet when it comes to the widespread readership of my blog, and the influence that it can have, I might just mention that I received a very nice email from the Northern Ireland Minister for Culture and Sport, Nelson McCausland, in response to my expressing support for his religious freedom.

Nelson McCausland, Northern Ireland Minister for Culture, has stated that he won't attend Catholic services because of his religious beliefs.  For this he has been attacke by the small and the bad, inc the ever sensitive Sinn Féin.

I find myself completely supportive of Nelson's position. He has a religious view and he's entitled to it. It's not an intolerant view in that he, to the best of my knowledge, supports the religious freedom of Catholics to worship as they believe. To force him to p...

Brian McFatty arriving for funeral

Yesterday Boyzone arrived in Majorca to take Stephen's body home, revealing matching tattoos in his memory. All four have an 'S' for Stephen and the numbers 76 09, the years of his birth and death.  A source said: 'The tattoos were done as a mark of respect for Stephen.'

A Majorcan police statement taken from Bulgarian Giorgio Dochev, 25, who was in their holiday apartment that evening, reveals that Gately had smoked a cannabis joint and that the trio had be...

I have always had an interest in the Law and as friends will know, I have in the past exercised a judicial funtion.  So I often have a look at case law from other jurisdictions, particularly as the common law tradition allows judges in one jurisdiction to refer to judgments in other jurisdictions.  This case from Canada is rather interesting:

Osborne
(Osborne v. Canada (Treasury Board), [1991] 2 S.C.R. 69)

In this case, a group of federal public servants wanted to participate in various poli...

Something unusual happened to me today.  This morning I submitted a letter for publication to The Irish Catholic.  I have previously had letters published there on a number of topics.  So this morning I emailed the following letter:

Since 2007 bishops, priests and lay people around the world have been resigning from Amnesty International in protest at its decision to begin supporting legal access to abortion as a human right. 

Renato Cardinal Martino, then President of the Pontifical Council...

In his judgement the Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said Mr O'Rourke had not filled in his application form correctly.

He said: "This was an application to become Queen's Counsel.

"Anyone aspiring to that rank must be capable of careful...

Dr Trayce Hansen, writes that "Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual."

And significa...

Taking the salute from Obama Youth

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has been invited by the Margaret Sanger School of Eugenics in Boston to attend the commencement ceremony for abortion and sterilization technicians June 20 during which he will receive the David Steele award for commitment to reproductive services.  The Director of the School, Professor U von Asia, said that while they disagreed with some of the Holy Father's views on abortion, they fully supported his opposition to the Iraq war.  The event would provide an oppo...

“Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet, 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnanc...

Apparently the Children's Ombudsman is not at all happy with the HSE.  She had stopped her investigation into their part in the Cloyne abuse saga because they are refusing to cooperate.  Seems the only document they sent was a photocopy of an already publicly available document.  And then on foot of continuing request from the Ombudsman, they wanted to negotiate via senior counsel.  The Ombudsman decided not to waste public many and called a halt to her investigations while going public on th...