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Mary Kenny Opinion Despite aching limbs and advancing years, Pope Francis must set the standard by soldiering on

For more than a year, there have been persistent rumours of Pope Francis’s imminent resignation: pictures of the pontiff in a wheelchair during his recent Canadian trip have enhanced such speculation, along with his own references to failing health.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Can snobbery be outlawed? A group of psychologists recommends it should be

It’s a given now that in any civilised society there are laws aimed at preventing discrimination on grounds of race, gender, age, pregnancy and sexual orientation.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Reform the Catholic church’s structure, yes, but don’t forget its beauty and spirituality

The “next chapter” of the Catholic Church in Ireland will be a very different one from those which went before, says Archbishop Eamon Martin. The consultation among the faithful – known as the Synodal Pathway – whose findings will be published next month will unveil a profile of Irish Catholicism which is much in contrast to what went before.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Step-parent and mother-in-law – Camilla’s relationship with Meghan is no fairy tale

It can be tough being a step-parent in the best of circumstances, and being a step-parent and a mother-in-law simultaneously might be the most challenging of all.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Everybody loathes Boris Johnson now, but I still have loyalty to a rascally fellow wordsmith

Just about everyone seems to loathe Boris Johnson right now, from those who once hired him – Sir Max Hastings, formerly of the Daily Telegraph, has said Boris “cares for nothing but his own fame and gratification” – to an Irish priest friend who sent me an email yesterday referring to “the human horror that is Boris Johnson … that man represents EVIL in so many different ways”.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Robots may be able to imitate Shakespeare, but we’ll always treasure the human touch

And so, the latest development in this brave new world of ours is that a super-robot equipped with a “neural network” can simulate the writings of William Shakespeare or the novels of Jane Austen or Sally Rooney.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Yes, Elvis was a hip-swivelling musical icon but he was also a pioneer of progressive race relations

If diversity is one of the key progressive themes of our age, then it’s probable that one of the pioneers of this idea is an unexpected one: Elvis Presley.

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Mary Kenny Opinion The ‘change’ in attitudes to menopause is welcome – but it’s now wrongly viewed as a disease

When I was in my 20s, my aunt called me “disgraceful” for using the word “menopause” in mixed company.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Michael D very fortunate he doesn’t get a king-sized thrashing for voicing an opinion

When the Prince of Wales contemplates the matter, he must sometimes envy President Michael D Higgins, who seems to have so much more leeway in expressing his opinions .

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Mary Kenny Opinion Why there’s good reason to mark Father’s Day – even if you don’t have a card to send

The adverts have been piling into my inbox since last week – while the shops have been full of suggested gifts – urging us to mark Father’s Day, celebrated in 48 countries on the third Sunday of June.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Divorce, hook-ups and violent porn – have women been harmed by the sexual revolution?

Was the sexual revolution essentially exploitative of women? That’s the thesis advanced by a young left-wing feminist, Louise Perry, a graduate in women’s studies and columnist for London’s New Statesman.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Have a heart, sisters – nuns are people and people are a mix of negative and positive

I am not an unalloyed admirer of nuns – still chippy about my convent education, which I consider to have been blighted by the Loreto nuns’ obsession with respectability and their favouritism of the cleverer pupils.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Forgetful? Yes, we can be. But brain blur is not always the same as Alzheimer’s

So the experts have now nailed a proper distinction between the onset of dementia and the normal signs of growing old. Forgetting something you were told 10 minutes ago is a sign of dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Society. Forgetting something you were told several months ago is normal oldster behaviour.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Queen Elizabeth’s absence from state opening of parliament signals new era for monarchy

Like the Catholic Church in Ireland, the British monarchy is said to have lost, or is losing, its historic allure for younger people. Older people support it, but a younger generation is more favourable to an elected head of state. According to a poll published this year by Statista, 41pc of 18 to 24-year-olds would now choose an elected president over a hereditary monarch – which, like religious faith, seems an outdated concept to the Instagram generation.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Twenties were nothing at all like Downton Abbey, but its escapism still enchants

My mother and her five siblings were all young in the 1920s. From the drift of their conversation, I got the impression they had the most wonderful time.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Teachers might be wise to not enter risky blackboard jungle of grading their pupils

Teaching is a unique profession. People remember an inspirational teacher – and a cruel one – all their lives.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Forget those qualms about ‘flashy’ first holy communions. We all need the beauty of ceremony in our lives

The two women sitting alongside me on an Aer Lingus flight to London were the epitome of the ‘ladies who lunch’: perfect tans, expensively streaked hair, designer handbags.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Liberty, equality, uncertainty?’ – How anxiety has replaced French self-confidence

I have spent time in France every year of my adult life, since the age of 18. It took Covid to break the pattern and I hadn’t been back since 2019 – until last week, in the throes of the presidential election campaign.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Yes, there are a few aches and pains but to live to be old is a privilege that has its own joys

Earlier this week, I reached another milestone in Senior Citizen status – yes, hard to ignore my palindromic date of birth: 4.4.44. Those of us who came of age in the glorious 1960s may find it difficult to identify with being old – why, we were the youth generation, who wore lapel-badges saying “Never trust anyone over 30” – but that’s just what we are. Old biddies and old gits exchanging conversations about “the organ recital” (the current litany of health complaints).

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Mary Kenny Opinion The evolution of attitudes to transgender is wonderful but it cannot distort fair play

It’s a little over two years since I encountered April Ashley at a London lunch party. She was 85 years of age and a beautiful old lady with perfect skin and graceful manners. She had been born George Jamieson in a poor Liverpool family and had once served in Britain’s Merchant Navy.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Yes, Planet Binchy is a cosier Ireland of yore – and maybe that explains its appeal

It’s lovely to see Maeve Binchy’s hugely popular novel Circle of Friends having a stage production next month, first at the Lime Tree Theatre in Limerick, and then at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.

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Mary Kenny Opinion On Paddy’s Day, don’t forget who forged the identity of Ireland – St Patrick himself

It’s great to see all the jollities return for St Patrick’s Day next week, and the sunburst of events and activities after the long winter of the pandemic. The colourful variety in parades and celebrations in recent years has often been cheering and enrichening. But sometimes one aspect seems to be missing, or at least sidelined: St ­Patrick himself.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Catholic, Anglican, Jedi or no faith... why you should complete the census form according to your own conscience

People who are not religious, or who no longer practise a faith, should be sure to put “no religion” on the Irish census form next month – urges the Humanist Association of Ireland. It’s important, says Jillian Brennan of the HAI, that the “no religion” category should emerge emphatically from the census statistics, so as to ensure “a more inclusive future for all Irish citizens”.

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Mary Kenny Opinion If the Irish Women’s Council wants to be ‘national’, it needs to broaden its agenda

We were radical young feminists when we launched the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement back in the 1970s, but many of us were also journalists in touch with the grassroots of Irish life.

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Mary Kenny Opinion TV tells brutal truth about the labour ward – but is there just too much information?

Goodness knows we’ve seen plenty of screen scenes from the labour wards in recent years, with women yelling, shrieking, groaning, pushing, their legs apart and aloft on medical stirrups. But Dr Adam Kay has surely taken it to a new level with his best-seller This Is Going to Hurt, now turned into a BBC drama series.

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Mary Kenny Opinion ‘Carrie Antoinette’ jibe is unfair, but every political spouse wields a degree of power

It was Dominic Cummings, embittered ex-spad (special adviser) to Boris Johnson, who dubbed the prime minister’s wife Carrie Antoinette and Princess Nut-Nut. Carrie adores small animals such as nut-eating squirrels, but the Carrie Antoinette jibe is surely unfair to the last queen of France, blamed for the callous extravagance of the Versailles monarchy .

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Mary Kenny Opinion How Peter Dinklage got Disney and everyone else to think again about fables and film

From time immemorial, people have enjoyed – in books, on screen or in pantomime – the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, who has dwarfism, has challenged how this narrative should be viewed.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Imagine – ‘wallflowers’ wept in the ladies’ loo over lack of wolf whistles and winks

On one point, I think Meghan Markle is absolutely right: her insistence on “my truth”. There are objective truths, such as in the laws of physics, but in human relations there are also personal truths, and we are each of us entitled to “my truth”.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Sloanies, Bobos, even Free Staters – how people like to cluster into their own tribes

Forty years ago, a book which seemed to be about the less-than-urgent subject of interior decoration became an unexpected international best-seller. This was the 1982 Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, by Peter York and Ann Barr, and it identified not just style and design: it described a particular tribe of fashionable folk clustered around the Chelsea area of Sloane Square in London, wittily dubbed, “Sloane Rangers”. Diana Spencer had been one of them.

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Mary Kenny Opinion Pope may have phrased it wrongly, but he’s right – the world does need more babies

Pope Francis took quite a pasting from pet-lovers recently for saying it was “a form of selfishness” for young people to have dogs and cats instead of babies. Yet many demographers, as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, agree with the pontiff.