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Pilgrimage for fathers to take place in Knock this Sunday
~Ireland’s only pilgrimage expressly designed for fathers will take place on Sunday, March 21 in Knock. The event, which was launched in 2003, has attracted many thousands of families since it began, and involves fathers and mothers praying for each other, for children and for families. Read more...
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Religious freedom being restricted, nearly a third say in poll
~Nearly a third of people in the UK believe that religious freedoms have been restricted over the past decade, a new survey shows. The poll, carried out by ComRes on behalf of the public theology think tank Theos, showed that 32 per cent of people believed that religious freedom had been weakened in the past 10 years. The poll accompanies a new Theos report on religious freedom. Read more...
Referendum on blasphemy to be held
~A Constitutional amendment to delete the current prohibition on blasphemy is to be proposed by Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, when the children’s rights amendment is held, the Irish Times has reported. Mr Ahern proposed an amendment to the Defamation Bill last April, with the aim of defining the offence of blasphemy, which is referred to in the Constitution, and was also referred to in the 1961 Defamation Act. Read more...
Catholic adoption agency wins religious freedom case
~A legal loophole intended to protect gay rights charities has enabled a Catholic adoption agency in the UK to continue to refuse to place children with homosexual couples. Catholic Care's unexpected legal victory should allow similar adoption agencies forced to close or dissociate from the church to reopen as Catholic organisations. Read more...
UK law ‘abandons concept of marriage’
~A leading UK family lawyer has said the law in England and Wales no longer has a clear concept of marriage. Baroness Deech, the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, in a public lecture yesterday, said that some differences between civil partnerships and marriage should be preserved, and criticises recent Labour laws that allow lesbian couples to be named on birth certificates with no mention of a father. Read more...
EU directive should threaten conscience rights warns expert
~A proposed EU equality directive may threaten liberty of conscience and freedom of speech, a leading advocate for religious freedom has warned. Read more...
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Give unmarried fathers automatic guardianship status: call
~The Equality Authority has said that unmarried fathers should be given the rights of guardianship automatically on the birth of their children. They made the recommendation in a submission in response to the Law Reform Commission’s (LRC) consultation paper, Legal Aspects of Family Relationships, which is looking at the lack of rights attaching to unmarried fathers. Read more...
Children's amendment “won't give State too much power”, say TDs
~The proposed children's rights referendum, which will lower the threshold at which the State can intervene in the family to remove children will not give the State too much power, TDs have claimed. Speaking during a Dáil debate on the report of the Joint Committee Constitutional Amendment on Children, a range of TDs from different parties said that the amendment would recognise that the primary and natural carers, educators and protectors of the welfare of a child are the child’s parents. Read more...
Stay-at-home mothers losing faith in Labour: study
~Stay-at-home mothers in the UK are deserting the Labour Party because of its policy focus on women who earn a wage according to a new study from a leading sociologist. Mr Geoff Dench, who revealed his findings at a seminar organised by influential centre-right think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, said: “Women who value home and family life above a career are becoming disenfranchised. Read more...
Budget amendment on forced abortion fails in European Parliament
~Amendments to the EU Budget which would have explicitly prevented projects funded by the EU going towards coercive abortion and sex-selective abortion failed to secure enough votes to be approved yesterday. There were 316 votes against Amendment 733, which would have explicitly prevented funding of coercive abortion, with 305 MEPs voting for the amendment. Read more...
Bishops "very worried" over Civil Partnership Bill
~The Conference of Catholic Bishops has said that it is “very worried” about the conscience implications of the Civil Partnership Bill, and have criticised the substance of the Bill, suggesting that it will undermine marriage. At a press conference following their spring meeting, Bishop Christopher Jones, of Elphin said that the bishops were also considering whether to take a Constitutional action should the Bill become law. Read more...
Church of Ireland delegation presses Government for conscience clause: report
~A delegation from the Church of Ireland is to met Department of Justice officials yesterday to urge the Government to accept a freedom of conscience clause in the Civil Partnership Bill, according to a report in the Sunday Business Post. Under the Bill as currently written, Church organisations may be forced to allow Church properties to be used for same-sex civil union celebrations or face being sued. Read more...
Bishops "surprised" at Minister's statement on Catholic schools
~Bishop Leo O'Reilly, the chairman of the Catholic bishops commission on education, has expressed surprise at a speech by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday in which he said his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools”. Read more...
Same-sex marriage push "not about rights", says academic
~The movement to legalise same-sex marriage is not about obtaining benefits and rights for same-sex couples, but obtaining public approval for different forms of sexual conduct and relationships, a leading US legal academic has said. Read more...
Catholic school numbers to be cut in 10 areas
~Officials at the Department of Education are looking at ten urban areas where the number of Catholic primary schools will be cut, it has been revealed. But under arrangements announced by the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keefe earlier this year, it will be the patrons of the schools, normally the local bishop, and local communities who will decide on the need for Church-run schools and whether closures will take place. Read more...
Church of England clergy may be forced to conduct same-sex unions: warning
~A leading Church of England bishop has warned that Anglican clergy may be sued for discrimination if they refuse to “marry” homosexuals under a proposed law. Other religious leaders fear that the proposal may force churches that refuse to bless civil partnerships to close. Read more...
Social welfare system "encourages fraud" by cohabiting couples
~The current social welfare system is encouraging fraud by cohabiting parents, a joint Oireachtas committee was told yesterday in reference to the social welfare payment for one-parent families. Treoir, a support organisation for unmarried single parents, was responding to a report commissioned by the Social and Family Affairs Committee on financial disincentives to cohabitation and marriage. Read more...
English bishops issue election guide
~Society has a vested interest in supporting marriage as the surest basis for family life, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have said. In their pre-election document, Choosing the Common Good, the bishops write that the family is "the first school of life and love, where the capacity to relate to others, to develop moral character, is founded". Read more...
Social services criticised over handling of abuse case
~Social workers of the Western Health Board have been criticised for their handling of a case in Roscommon in which a father has been found guilty of 47 counts rape and sexual assault when his son was aged between 12 and 15. The family’s mother was jailed last year for similar offences. At the hearing, the lawyer for the father, David Goldberg, told the court that the health board “had put a course of action in progress for putting the children into care”. Read more...
Militant atheist charged with religious harassment over cartoon leaflets
~A militant atheist who left obscene leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, the Pope and the Koran in the prayer room of an international airport has gone on trial charged with religious harassment. Harry Taylor, a 59-year-old self-styled philosophy tutor left leaflets with "sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant cartoons", in the prayer room at Liverpool's John Lennon airport, a jury heard yesterday. Read more...
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Martin Mansergh defends religious freedom
~Voluntary religious organisations such as pregnancy counselling agencies and adoption agencies should not be forced by the State to act against their ethos, according to Minister of State, Martin Mansergh. Minister Mansergh was speaking at Trinity College Chapel on Sunday. He also said that republics such as Ireland are not required by republican ideology to adopt a radically secular view of society based on “the post-1789 French model”. This relegated religion to the private sphere and in its most militant phase violently persecuted the Church. Read more...
Anger at home-school abuse link claim
~Supporters of home-schooling have reacted angrily to attempts to link home-schooling with the death by starvation in Birmingham of seven year old Khyra Ishaq. Khrya was imprisoned in her home by her mother and step-father and died of starvation in May 2008. She had been withdrawn from her school the previous December. Read more...
UK teen pregnancy strategy fails
~A ten-year UK strategy costing millions of pounds to cut the “shameful” number of teenage pregnancies in Britain has failed to make any serious impact. pregnant Labour Ministers accept that they cannot meet Tony Blair’s target, set in 1999, of halving pregnancies among under-18s by 2012. Figures today will show that Britain still has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe. Read more...
Parents have rights to see children educated in their religion says Cardinal
~All parents, whatever their denominational background, have the right to have their children educated in accordance with their religious convictions, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, has said. Speaking to the annual conference of the Northern Ireland Catholic Principals’ Association, Cardinal Brady said that this right was “recognised in international instruments of human rights, including the European Convention on Human Rights”. Read more...
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Senator Mullen questions children’s rights amendment
~Independent Senator, Ronan Mullen, has questioned aspects of the proposed children’s rights amendment, especially its reference to ‘children of the State’ and a child’s ‘best interests’. He was speaking yesterday in the Seanad debate on the proposed amendment. Read more...
Scottish Labour MP in row over Catholic vote
~Attempts by the Labour Party in Scotland to attract religious voters backfired spectacularly this week when the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, condemned the party for an "unrelenting attack on family values" during its time in government. In an stinging rebuke that could significantly damage Labour's prospects in Scotland at the forthcoming general election, Cardinal O'Brien said he could not think of a "tangible example" of the party embracing the views of the Catholic Church in the past decade. Read more...
Bishops call for churches to hold same-sex ceremonies
~A number of Church of England bishops have called for homosexual couples to be allowed to enter civil partnerships in churches. A proposed amendment to the Equality Bill to allow, as distinct from require, civil partnerships to be conducted in religious premises is believed to have gained the backing of some bishops in the House of Lords. Read more...
Current lone parent benefit “not in best interests of society”, says Minister
~The situation whereby parents can obtain the Lone Parent Allowance until their child reaches 22 if the child is in full time education, is “not in the best interests of the recipient, their children or society,” the Minister for Social Welfare, Mary Hanafin, has said. Minister Hanafin was responding to a Dáil question from Fine Gael TD, Olwyn Enright, about her plans to reform the Lone Parent payment. Read more...
Legal expert expresses doubts about children’s rights referendum
~A leading constitutional lawyer has expressed scepticism about the need for a children's rights referendum. Speaking on the RTE radio programme, This Week, Dr Gerard Hogan, the co-author of a text book on the Constitution, and a prominent barrister, said that the current Constitution acknowledged the rights of children, although it did so in "a sort of indirect way". Read more...
Scandals have damaged Church’s ability to defend marriage says bishop
~The Church’s ability to speak out on marriage and the family, sexual morality and on its role in education has been damaged by the impact of the scandals, a leading Irish bishop has acknowledged. In a statement following last week’s meeting of the Irish bishops with Pope Benedict, the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, said that while child abuse was not a problem peculiar to the Church, “nevertheless its impact is intensified in the Church”. Read more...
Decline of marriage charted by new report
~Marriage in Ireland has declined steeply since the 1980s, a new report has confirmed. The report, entitled Family Figures: Family Dynamics and Family Types in Ireland, was published yesterday by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), and found that the number of people in alternative family forms, especially cohabitation and lone parent families, had risen dramatically. Read more...
Sex ed in faith schools should not reflect ethos say Lib Dems
~Faith-based schools cannot be allowed to teach sex education in a way that is true to their ethos, according to the Liberal Democrats and the British Humanist Association. They say they by permitting this, those schools will teach sex education in a manner that is ‘homophobic’, ‘sexist’ and would ‘violate’ human rights. Read more...
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Senator Norris misquotes Iona Institute on children’s rights
~Senator David Norris misquoted The Iona Institute in the Seanad on Wednesday, incorrectly saying the institute was concerned that the proposed children’s rights amendment would “impinge on the power and authority of the Church.” In fact in its statement on the proposed referendum, and in subsequent media appearances, The Iona Institute, and its director, David Quinn, said its main concern was that the amendment might give the State excessive power to intervene in family life as has occurred in other jurisdictions. Read more...
Bacik wants debate on Church and State
~Senator Ivana Bacik has called for a public debate on the relationship between Church and State in Ireland. She was reacting to the meeting in Rome between the Pope and the Irish hierarchy. Senator Bacik said she wants to see the continued involvement of the Church in education debated, as well as the broadcast of the Angelus by RTE. Read more...
Diocese closes foster care programme over gay marriage law
~The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has ended its 80-year-old foster-care program in the District rather than license same-sex couples, the first fallout from a bitter debate over the city's move to legalise same-sex marriage. Read more...
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