Enforcing the fairness principle in a criminal justice approach, and ruling out discretion (though it tends to skew upwards), risks removal of the potential for mercy and leniency from our penal system.

Climate change is here. There is no question. The years of warning what’s to come if we don’t change our ways has caught up to our present, pointing the finger to human induced climate change. Deadly heatwaves, droughts, glacier instability causing devastating destruction and loss of life and flooding are our prevailing reality now. The… Read more »

There is an Irish podcast run by three self-described middle-aged women who talk about life at their age and their current struggles. I will admit, as a 29-year-old, I have little interest in listening to the podcast as our life stages and socio-economic statuses do not currently align (both being substantially less than theirs). However,… Read more »

At the end of July JCFJ hosted an evening of mixed emotions to mark two occasions.

Waste of Resources Should society decriminalise the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use? I would argue yes. I have personally spent five mornings in court with a young man who was charged with possession of cannabis valued at €2. The prosecuting Garda also spent five mornings in court. The young man was… Read more »

This is something I have been thinking about as the news cycle has shifted from wildfires, e-scooter mania, road deaths and the doubling down by the government on fossil fuel dependant infrastructure, including road building. The obvious contradictions in sentiments of the government and their actions are something we have noted many times and reflects… Read more »

I recently read an article by the Dublin Inquirer about a shrine in Phibsborough that people pay homage to and leave gifts at in hopes of obtaining a home in Ireland. The Shrine to the Housing God has become a symbol of sorts of the dire state of the housing market in this country, where… Read more »

Ethical Guidance on AI Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical – an authoritative teaching on a specific moral question that takes the form of a letter – last month. It was subtitled “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” but it has a much wider remit, offering extended and careful… Read more »

Operating on the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry, Dingle Hub is a non-profit company that specialises in local activation of communities for climate initiatives. Last week they convened a Teacht le Chéile, a coming together of people from civil society, local government and state agencies. The purpose of the gathering was to show what they… Read more »

The headline “Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says” ran in Politico during the week, and I was impressed by the bluntness of the option, although not surprised that this made headline news considering climate scientists and environmental advocates have been saying variations of this for a while and we… Read more »

Introduction The rural scenes on view from the Holyhead to London train provided a fitting backdrop to reading the memoir of James Rebanks, a farmer and author based in the Lake District where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. On a recent sail and rail journey from Dublin to Louvain,… Read more »

To mark Laudato Si’ Week and Biodiversity Week, which both took place in May, we invited members of Jesuit schools and communities to send in their nature photographs. We were delighted with the number and quality of entries from all over Ireland. It was very difficult to choose the winners but the JCFJ hivemind particularly… Read more »

It should come as no shock to anyone living in Ireland or those who have left Ireland that a recent fact-finding mission by the European Parliament’s housing committee found Ireland’s housing crisis to be one of the “most severe” and “most complicated” in Europe. Attributing our worsening crisis in part to institutional landlords, evictions, and… Read more »

‘In Christ, we are called to cooperate in the work of creation, rather than be disinterested observers of technological processes that limit our freedom and responsibility.’ -Pope Leo XIV, MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS Dr Kevin Hargaden and Fr Niall Leahy SJ take 30 minutes to discuss the main themes of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical. Explaining themes,… Read more »

Galway has a big congestion problem. It has been going on for decades. You would think in this amount of time plenty of solutions would have been put forward to try and stem this problem and release Galway people from the misery of sitting unnecessarily in traffic for hours. This problem is bad for the… Read more »

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend and present at an Economy of Francesco conference, held over three days in Assisi. The conference, ‘At the Roots of Economic Ethics’, celebrated 800 years of Franciscan thought, and explored existing and potential contributions of Franciscan and Catholic theology to today’s economy. It welcomed contributors from… Read more »

This year’s paper, “For we know not what we do. Reflections on punishment, community and forgiveness,” was delivered by Prof. Dr. Pieter De Witte. A prison chaplain and visiting professor at the Chair for Detention, Meaning, and Society at KU Leuven (Belgium). He organises and teaches service-learning courses in Belgian prisons and detention centres, bringing together university… Read more »

This won’t be a long read. The JCFJ has been consistently opposed to nuclear power in Ireland and even though the government is now proposing to change the law around this technology, our position hasn’t changed.  When the Taoiseach spoke in support of James O’Connor’s bill, he noted that “fossil fuels have done extremely serious… Read more »

“The Pope is weak on crime.” At first glance, one struggles to make sense of it. How can it be that this is something that the American President has said – published, indeed – in an attack on Leo XIV so broad that an ardent Free Presbyterian would wince to read it. The rant was… Read more »

In ecological experimentation, one of the ways to examine how systems work is to disturb the system, by, for example, adding, removing, or changing the behaviour of a particular species and looking at how the system responds. These experiments are used to see how resilient or vulnerable a system is. The fuel protests last week… Read more »

You may have heard talk about planning permissions being waived for homeowners to build standalone or modular units in their back gardens (often informally known as granny flats) up to 45sq.m. in order to increase the amount of available rental units in the country. These types of accommodations are not new and got its colloquial… Read more »

In the days leading up to this Good Friday, I was immersed in re-reading one of my favourite books ever. It is a genuinely undiscovered masterpiece called After Crucifixion by the American theologian, Craig Keen. It reminded me of how easily I am tempted to wrap today up in pious sentimentality. I overheard a brief… Read more »

This year’s paper, “For we know not what we do. Reflections on punishment, community and forgiveness,” will be delivered by Prof. Dr. Pieter De Witte, KU Leuven on Tuesday, 21st April. It promises to be a stimulating event as we consider the role of punishment and the place of prison in society. This is particularly… Read more »

Earlier this month, one of Ireland’s major carrot producers, Hughes Farming, went into administration.

Though this ordeal, the State has inflicted immeasurable harm and suffering on Patrick Sibanyoni. There is the immediacy and acuity of the pain from being in prison with a psychiatric illness. There is the potential for greater unnecessary disability over his life as his condition worsened without treatment.