There’s a kind of knowledge about the city that you can only learn on a saddle. It’s not just a familiarity with the camber of Dublin’s streets, or the distinctive staccato vibration brought about by tarmac as it degrades, or how the traffic lights are engineered so a cyclist has to move out into… Read more »

  Irish society has been dramatically reorganised to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. The national collective effort has been immense, directed at all times to “flattening the curve” and enabling our stretched medical system a chance to cope with those who are ill. Not since the World War II has Irish society faced… Read more »

  While our thoughts naturally turn to the Spanish Flu pandemic when trying to make sense of Covidtide, remembering the much more recent AIDS epidemic is also essential. More than a generation ago, the Irish moral theologian, Enda McDonagh, wrote an essay about the theological implications of the AIDS epidemic that still resonates today.

  On March 26th, readers of the Financial Times saw an unexpected obituary. Among the many victims that have already fallen to Covid-19, the go-to source of news for global capitalism declared the end of neoliberalism. So many established facts of life have fallen under the force of the pandemic that many people are openly… Read more »

  Two years ago,  on the centenary of the Spanish flu pandemic, Kevin Hargaden wrote about the need to address structural injustices  in society and in our health system to prepare for the next global pandemic, and reminded us that Christians have always tended to the sick and marginalised.

  In many ways, the book of Exodus is the cornerstone of the bible. The story of liberation from slavery and the idea that God identifies with the oppressed is the bass-line for Jesus’ ministry. But there was always one part of the narrative that I struggled with, says Kevin Hargaden.

  Last Autumn, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice published an issue of Working Notes built around the theme of “risk”. Those essays have continued relevance, but none of them mention pandemics. This is not an oversight on our part. We understood risk as a compound concept. It isn’t simply a function of unexpected… Read more »

  Our current market-focused political culture came to power after the oil crises of the 1970s. In normal circumstances, it would be highly unlikely that any electorate would vote for a system that systematically weakened social welfare, deregulated markets, and reorganised resources so that rich people were more likely to get richer. But the architects… Read more »

  Despite 2019’s “green wave”, just a small percentage of the electorate says the environment is their top priority when choosing who to vote for in next month’s general election. To see it as disconnected from the other electoral issues is an error, says Kevin Hargaden.

In our general election guide to the economy, our Social Theologian, Kevin Hargaden says we should ask ourselves who the economy serves, and how it is affecting our lives and the life of the planet.