Ruadhan Jones

Freelance Catholic journalist based in Ireland. 'Life without a goal is flourishing in vain' - Bl. Franz Jägerstätter

[The Catholic Herald @CatholicHerald]

At a time when Ireland is need of a Catholic intellectual revival, its presence at third level is shrinking.

At the end of May, St Patrick’s College in Carlow, announced that its campus being handed over to a state-run, secular university.

✍️ @RuadhanJ

https://t.co/Er5VjH0XMH

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

@DanielJHannan I agree. Also I think the right are too distracted by migration, miss the real issue - the enemy of our national life is within our gates. Mass migration is a symptom of the fact we no longer agree who we are or what our nations are for

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

clothing which is contaminated by vice" 1 Jude.

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

"When there are some who have doubts reassure them; when there are some to be saved from the fire, pull them out; 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗺 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, keeping your distance even from outside...

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

"Real reform is to strive to let what is ours disappear as much as possible do what belongs to Christ may become more visible... what the Church needs to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management" Cardinal Ratzinger

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

@DespoticInroad an (unintentional) companion piece to your insightful article, on the marriage of left and right in Britain

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Punks hated Thatcherism, but they played as big a role in ushering in our age of radical individualism as did the Iron Lady. "Don't dictate" was the motto of the punks in the cultural sphere, just as it was the libertarians' in the economic.
https://t.co/O2cfEiNNOS

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

I bet AI would love the Manualists

[Bree Solstad @BreeSolstad]

Here’s the thing.

AI models are not biased towards Catholicism. They just have done the research and know that if someone is asking about converting, the only place to truly go is the One Holy Catholic Church!

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

This really is a remarkable statistic. Overall couples where one or both parents were born outside the UK accounted for 40% of births

[Office for National Statistics (ONS) @ONS]

34.6% of live births in 2025 were to mothers born outside of the UK, an increase from 33.9% in 2024.

India remains the most frequent country of birth for non-UK-born mothers (4.7% of births) and fathers (4.9% of births) for the fourth year in a row.

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Funny how these articles on Catholicism are popping up on mainstream secular media. Saw a BBC article recently warning Fatima is used to peddle far-right politics, now this piece on how happy nuns on TikTok conceal the misogynistic reality of the Church
https://t.co/UZXJuG9HfH

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Seeing this reminds me of the pioneering work of the great Irish priest Fr James McDyer, who set up a folk museum in a tiny rural village to tackle unemployment and encourage young people to remain. Such innovation would be welcome today
https://t.co/UTq44JsVRu

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Palestinian Bishop William Shomali: Amid violence and war, the minority Christian community in the Holy Land is struggling. But they continue to hope in God and trust themselves to him in prayer. @ireland_acn
https://t.co/bI2VpN9hJb

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

A perceptive piece - Britain is a combo of the worst of right economics and left social/cultural products. But the elft shares the blame for individualism - through punk, it embraced an aggressive self-actualisation that ushered in our age of atomization.

[Despotic Inroad @DespoticInroad]

Wrote about The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher play, the lasting legacy of Thatcherism on the Scouse imagination, & the emerging analytical divide re: the specific moment of Britain’s lapse into secular decline.

For the Right, it’s 1997:
🔴Blairite/New Labour constitutional reform: HRA/Supreme Court/Equalities Act/devolution etc.
🔴Expansion of HE & rise of progressive graduate technocracy
🔴Dispersal of state capacity/authority across QUANGOcracy, regulatory/international bodies, activist judiciary etc.

For the Left, it’s 1979:
🔵Privatisation
🔵Globalisation/financialisation, the decline of national economy & industrial employment, rise in regional disparities
🔵Emasculation of organised labour

The truth is it’s both. We’re living in a mongrel system, with each layer of state amalgamated into an undifferentiated public-private-partnership blob. It’s Fisher’s “market Stalinism”, with corporate privateer ownership models & top-down state bureaucratism bearing down on any genuine dynamism, brought about by 45 years of Blatcherism.

https://t.co/zY9WIBbFDS

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

A woman-only app discriminated against a transgender woman by not allowing the biological male to enter what was intended as a safe online space for women. It sets an important precedent, which may have global implications
https://t.co/R5PznufLND

[Jonathan Liedl @JLLiedl]

Card. Eijk criticizes Study Group 9's final report for causing "deliberate ambiguity" on the Church's moral teaching.

"This is not merely a technical deficiency-- it is a fundamental contradiction of Catholic teaching that demands a forceful response."
https://t.co/1coVmmMcFp

[Statement @StatementIntl]

Ukraine moves to ban foreign surrogacy. Abandoned babies and lack of rules push the state to act.

You can find the latest news on our profile @StatementIntl

Link: https://t.co/DlBDgAPduJ

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Another graph that shows the curious similarities between Ireland Eastern Europe

[EU_Eurostat @EU_Eurostat]

Relative to population, the highest ratio of rail passengers per capita in the EU countries in 2024 was recorded in:

🇱🇺Luxembourg (46.2)
🇦🇹Austria (35.6)
🇩🇰Denmark (35.2)

Lowest in:

🇬🇷Greece (1.4)
🇱🇹Lithuania (1.8)
🇧🇬Bulgaria (3.3)

Read more 👉 https://t.co/V8txCAgckz

[Statement @StatementIntl]

Europe’s fuel protests reveal a deeper truth: elites ignored ordinary voters for too long — and paid the price.

You can find the latest news on our profile @StatementIntl

Link: https://t.co/k3AIZGsuHg

[Ruadhan Jones @RuadhanJ]

Removing Sweden's inheritance tax led to higher salaries, stronger company growth and increased corporation tax receipts, a new study of the Nordic nation's taxation system suggests

[Statement @StatementIntl]

Sweden's inheritance tax repeal boosted growth, raised salaries, and increased total tax revenue.

You can find the latest news on our profile @StatementIntl

Link: https://t.co/vZzjqhJ8uj

[MENA Visuals @menavisualss]

🇸🇦 One of the World's Oldest Churches from the 4th Century in Saudi Arabia.

⛪️ The Jubail Church, discovered by chance in 1986, is a historic site belonging to the Nestorian tradition (Church of the East) and is considered one of the oldest surviving church structures in the world, dating back to the 4th century. Located near the city of Jubail in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia along the Gulf, the structure was built by Christian communities and clergy active along the trade routes between Mesopotamia and the Gulf, likely including local populations under the cultural influence of the Lakhmid Kingdom that dominated the region at the time. Constructed of mud-brick among the desert dunes, the church features clearly visible carved cross motifs on its walls; the site serves as one of the most concrete architectural proofs of the region's rich pre-Islamic religious diversity and the presence of an extensive episcopal network that once spread along the Gulf coast.