The Iona Institute ~ for Religion and Society
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Opinions contained in The Iona Blog are not necessarily those of The Iona Institute. The Iona Blog is open to anyone who broadly shares the views of The Iona Institute. If you wish to post a comment on a relevant topic please email 200 – 400 words to info@ionainstitute.ie and it will be considered for inclusion in the blog.
Marriage and the family: script from Monday night's Frontline
~I was on Frontline last night on RTE debating the family. Senator Ivana Bacik and I had to read out an opening statement at the start of the show briefly setting out our cases. Read more...
Government Ministers hypocritical on Church and politics
~On Saturday, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin responded to recent statements by a couple of senior politicians, Ministers John Gormley and Dermot Ahern, suggesting that religion had no place in political debate. Minister Gormley said that he “thought we had left the era of Church interference behind” and advised the Church to “concentrate its efforts on looking after the spiritual needs of its flock and not intrude on temporal or State matters.” Read more...
A welcome decision on same-sex marriage by the ECHR
~Last week’s ruling that the European Convention on Human Rights does not confer an obligation on signatory states to recognise either same-sex marriage or civil partnerships is a welcome one to say the least. It is doubly welcome because the European Court of Human Rights (part of the Council of Europe) is normally so liberal. Read more...
Poll shows support for children’s rights referendum is very soft
~A poll in The Examiner today seems to indicate that there is clear majority in favour of a children’s rights referendum. It shows that 62 percent of respondents would vote in favour of a referendum with 37 percent undecided and only one percent against. Read more...
Same sex marriage not analogous to inter-racial marriage: author
~Here is an interesting article about the claim made by campaigners for same-sex “marriage” that their campaign is analagous to the civil rights struggle in the US. The author, Thomas M Messner, says that the analogy breaks down for a couple of reasons. Read more...
Fatherhood never more needed, but never more under threat
~This article on fathers and fatherhood by sociologist Dr Gordon Finley contains a lot of food for thought. It makes the point that there are now multiple threats to fatherhood, but concentrates on three: male unemployment, divorce, and non-marital childbearing. Read more...
Politicians tell Church to ‘know your place’
~In the last week, two senior politicians, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, and Green party leader, John Gormley, have effectively told both the Church, and by extension, religious believers, to ‘know your place’. In an interview with The Irish Times, Minister Ahern reiterated his view that politicians must leave their religion to one side when legislating and not let it ‘cloud’ their judgement. Read more...
Adults' rights trump children's concerns in AHR practice, says Irish Times columnist
~Last Saturday, Breda O'Brien dealt with the issue of Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) in her column in the Irish Times. Read more...
Why religion will make a comeback
~Last Thursday night in conjunction with The Irish Catholic we hosted Dr Eric Kaufmann who addressed an audience of about 120 people on the topic of his latest book, ‘Will the Religious Inherit the Earth?’ Kaufmann (himself on the secular (but moderate) side of the religious/secular divide) believes that predictions of the eventual secularisation of the entire planet are not just short of the mark, but could well be the opposite of the truth, even in the world’s secular heartland, Europe. Read more...
Waters takes O’Rourke to task over children’s rights poll
~Yesterday on this blog Tom O’Gorman attacked Mary O’Rourke for smearing any and all critics of the proposed children’s rights referendum without so much as pausing to consider their arguments. (So much for reasoned debate). Today John Waters makes much the same point in his Irish Times column. Read more...
O'Rourke smears those with questions on children's referendum
~Fianna Fáil TD Mary O'Rourke, who chaired the Oireachtas committee which produced the proposed wording for the children's referendum, has slammed possible opponents of the wording as “the forces of old”. It isn't the first time she has attempted to get her smears in first. Actually, her latest remarks represent a slight dialling down of her rhetoric. Read more...
A liberal grandee questions the sex revolution
~First it was Raquel Welch denouncing the legacy of the Pill. Now Dame Joan Bakewell, a long standing liberal campaigner, has admitted that Mary Whitehouse, a noted campaigner against sexual and violent television programmes, was actually right to worry about the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Read more...
Our politicians and freedom of conscience
~The Civil Partnership Bill was back at Committee stage yesterday (Thursday) and the issue of a conscience clause was once again considered and dismissed for the usual spurious reasons. Justice Minister Dermot Ahern told the Committee that “members of the public service (with) issues from their religious beliefs” have to “put those aside on the basis that they are employees of the State.” Read more...
Parental input key to teen sexual behaviour: Irish Times columnist
~Breda O'Brien's Irish Times column on sex education last Saturday contained a lot of food for thought and is well worth a read. Perhaps the most interesting point she makes is that, contrary to popular opinion, what parents say about sex has a major influence on teenagers and their sexual behaviour. Read more...
Civil Partnership Bill will treat Christians like bigots
~In my Irish Independent column of last Friday I write about the upcoming Civil Partnership Bill. If you are a regular visitor to this website you already know that the Bill makes no provision for freedom of conscience. Read more...
Weigel: Defending religious freedom an urgent need
~Noted US theologian and religious commentator George Weigel has written a thoughtful piece on the challenges posed to religious freedom in America. Read more...
When secularists like Church involvement in politics
~We're used to hearing politicians, especially those on the secular left, decry the influence of religion in politics. Such influence, they wail, breaches the wall between Church and State. So it was interesting to read that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi called on the Catholic Church to speak out from the pulpit to promote immigration reform at the start of this month. Read more...
The Pill is condemned by...Raquel Welch!
~Raquel Welch was one of the great sex symbols of the 1960s. Now, in a true man-bites-dog manner she has condemned the Pill for ruining marriage and bringing about ‘social anarchy’ in the form of the sex revolution. Read more...
Homophobia not relevant to same-sex adoption debate: GCN editor
~On Wednesday, the TV3 current affairs programme MidWeek dealt with the issue of same-sex adoption. Brenda Power, opposing it, said that State officials shouldn’t have to decide for a child whether it can do without a mother or a father. But perhaps the most interesting snippet from the discussion was a concession from Bryan Finnegan, the editor of Gay Community News. Read more...
Ciaran Cuffe, conscience and Tim Nicholson judgement
~Last Thursday, a leading UK judge, Lord Justice Laws, ruled that religious belief was “irrational”, had “no basis in fact” and that laws protecting freedom of conscience and religion were bound to lead to theocracy. His comments came as he ruled against Gary McParlane, a Christian sex therapist who refused to work with homosexuals because of his religious convictions. Read more...
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