lockdowns Archives - Catholic Herald

lockdowns

Helping young people escape the ‘social media trap’

April 08, 2024

In hindsight the Covid pandemic was the world’s most extensive experiment to settle a centuries-old question that has befuddled scientists and philosophers alike – despite the guidance offered by the Church. The apparent riddle for such lofty minds is whether human beings are primarily individuals who just enter society out of selfish needs, or are

Catholic group says UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry must consider detrimental impact of forcibly closing churches

March 27, 2024

LEICESTER, UK – A leading Catholic group in the UK is urging the ongoing Covid-19 Inquiry to look at the impact of the pandemic on people of faith across the British Isles. Founded in 1870 as an organisation dedicated to the defence of Catholic values in the UK Parliament and in public life, and to

Pilgrimage standoff: Assisi v. Santiago de Compostela, which comes out on top?

February 18, 2024

Can one commit pilgrimage “adultery”? In the months of planning leading up to taking a group of Catholic Herald pilgrims along a portion of La Via di Francesco—the Way of Saint Francis—to Assisi in Italy, I felt a strange sense of unease about how I might be engaged in a form of betrayal. For my peregrino pilgrim

Letters: Will we ever have an honest debate about ‘catastrophic decision’ of national lockdown

February 17, 2024

A high price Sir: Further to Lord Greenhalgh’s timely remarks, (“Covid churches lockdown was ‘outrageous’ says ex-minister’, December 2023) it is unfortunate that the UK Covid inquiry is ignoring the baleful effects of lockdown altogether. Equally outraged are the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaigners, who are furious about the way they suffered under rules

Crackdown on faith in Hong Kong is a warning to the West

February 07, 2024

Following a 2004 visit to the bright lights of Shanghai, columnist Peter Hitchens gloomily acknowledged that China, then approaching the zenith of its economic growth miracle, “proved that police states can also be prosperous”. It led him to caution: “If the world discovers that liberty is an optional extra, rather than a necessity, how long

Unexpected Santander Angelus amid echoes of Covid mania

January 16, 2024

In the bottom-left corner of the cathedral’s nave an old priest sat on a wooden chair with a shawl wrapped around his shoulders against the cold stones surrounding him. It indeed felt rather bracing inside the Cathedral of Santander that Saturday morning to say the least. Spain’s northern Cantabria region had been enjoying milder temperatures

Swathes of women are involuntarily single and childless: Covid lockdowns and the ticking biological clock

January 11, 2024

‘I can’t believe you’re about to have your third baby and I haven’t even had my first,” said an old girlfriend wistfully over supper the other night. This was not the first time I’d noticed this, although no one really talks about it, that women, when they enter their mid-to-late 30s, suddenly become very starkly