A brand of Italian ice-cream is using extremely sexually suggestive ads of models dressed as priests and nuns to promote itself. Needless to say, there have been objections. Those objecting have already been decried as 'bigots'.

Writing in The Irish Independent tonight, James Downey, who is one of Ireland's most senior and respected columnists, suggests that aggressive secularism is a figment of Bertie Ahern's imagination. But that it were so.

Here is my latest column in The Irish Independent.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet is now taking up in earnest his duties as new head of the extremely important Congregation for Bishops, extremely important because it has such a strong say in who gets to be a bishops. No-one needs any convincing that Ireland needs strong, decisive, capable and orthodox bishops now more than ever.

As predicted the report by the North’s Police Ombudsman has revealed that senior officials in the Northern Ireland Office and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were aware in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack in 1972 (which killed nine innocent civilians) that a Catholic priest, Fr Jim Chesney, was a suspect.

Despite this knowledge, Fr Chesney was never arrested. In fact, it was decided at the highest levels of the British government that he would not be arrested. This decision was communicated to Cardinal William Conway, the then Primate of All-Ireland, by Britain’s