IN HIS speech in Rimini last week Diarmuid Martin said: "School catechesis, despite the goodwill of teachers, does not produce young Catholics prepared to join in the Christian community. Sometimes, after 15 years of catechesis, young people remain theologically illiterate." He might have been referring to me.

Action needed to counter inequality if we are to exit economic recession. By Siobhan O’Donoghue.

Irish society remains deeply unequal despite massive wealth creation during the Celtic tiger years. It is estimated that a mere 5% of the population hold 40% of the wealth in Ireland. 

Discrimination as experienced by women, black and minority ethnic people  including travellers, older people, young people, lesbian, gay and transgendered people, lone parents, carers, people with a disability, people from minority religions, and people who are socio-economically disadvantaged continues to be a reality. At the height of the boom it was reported that 12.5% of the adult population reported experiencing discrimination.

A group of Irish artists together with the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) have launched a cultural boycott of Israel. By Eamonn Costello.

At a gathering in Dublin's Temple Bar, creative and performing artists undertook to boycott Israel by refusing to perform, or to allow their work be displayed there.

The signatures of over 160 poets, writers, actors, playwrights, dancers, sculptors, musicians and visual artists were collected for a pledge “not to avail of any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel, nor to accept any funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights”.

The government is not turning to community development or the community sector as a whole for support. By Ann Irwin.

People are often confused, and understandably so, about community development, often assuming that community development refers to everything that happens at local level – in communities or neighbourhoods. The reason for the confusion is that community development ‘the approach’ has become decoupled from community development ‘the objective’.

The objective of community development is to address poverty, social exclusion and disadvantage. Having lived through an unprecedented period of economic growth, some might believe that this no longer exists in Ireland but we are still a country with relatively high levels of poverty, social exclusion and inequality.

What is the point of all this innovation other than to make money for the designers, the manufacturers, and the retailers? By Vincent Browne.

Not since the age of five have I been given a present as good as the one I got for a recent birthday. Santa brought me a toy jeep back then.

I don’t recall why I was into SUVs at the time but it was great fun, aside from the trouble I had preventing my brothers from taking it. Happily, both of my brothers are tech-illiterate and there will be no competition from them for my recent acquisition - an iPad.

The Catholic Church’s controversial recent document Normae de Gravioribus Delictis put the sin of ordaining female priests on a par with child abuse. The document has reignited the debate on the role of women within the Church and society as a whole, as well as the role of feminism. By Sean Carroll.

In the late twentieth century feminism galvanized many young women into demanding fundamental change. The movement questioned ingrained ideology and aggressively advocated women’s equality.

Looking back from the vantage point of a modern liberal society it seems the movement had its work cut out for it. Consider the following:

There is a shocking distinction between the treatment of asylum seekers and the powerful in Irish society. By Siobhan O’Donoghue.

There is big money in oil. Certainly that seems to be the motivation for people like Sean Fitzpatrick, who along with Lar Bradshaw invested €25m in Movido Exploration and Production, an oil company operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. 

There is also big trouble associated with oil. The people of the Niger Delta have been struggling with this reality for decades.

Ireland is changing as a society. This change is accompanied by the many ways oppression (including racism) manifests in society. The very existence of racism has been markedly denied in recent years. Instead, the semantics of diversity and integration dominate the policy and public discourse. By Siobhan O’Donoghue.

The only formal structure with an exclusive focus on racism, the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, was unceremoniously closed in 2009, the National Action Plan Against Racism was ground to a halt, and Anti Racism in the Workplace Week was re-named Workplace Diversity Week.

Support for action on diversity, interculturalism and integration is important. But it will not generate positive results without equal weight being given to the more difficult and challenging work of countering racism.