The Iona Institute ~ for Religion and Society
Most Recent Blog Articles
The Iona Blog
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.
Waters on children's referendum
~John Waters (pictured) has a provocative column on the proposed children's rights referendum in today's Irish Times. Read more...
Case shows Constitution not to blame for failure to help vulnerable children
~A new report on the death of a seven-year-old girl, Khyra Ishaq (pictured), due to months of abuse at the hands of her mother and her boyfriend Junaid suggests that social services in her home town of Birmingham could have prevented the tragedy. Read more...
Barnardos' confusing approach to the HSE and children's rights
~On Thursday, Norah Gibbons, Director of Advocacy for children's group Barnardos described the HSE as not fit for the purpose of looking after children's welfare. Read more...
The USSR, Irish politics and the Constitution
~At the McGill summer school this week, Justice Adrian Hardiman made a very interesting and telling comparison between certain legal practices in the old Soviet Union and the impatience of certain groups in Ireland with the Constitution. Read more...
"This child will have no mother"
~Here's an article about two homosexual men who went through the process of finding an egg donor, written by one of the men involved. Read more...
Minister Ahern on Christianity and the family
~Recent pronouncements by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on the influence religious values should play in the life of a legislator have been depressing to say the least, but yesterday he seemed to contradict himself, although not in the way you might expect. In fact, he added insult to injury. Read more...
The shape of things to come
~A professor of religious studies has been fired by the University of Illinois for informing a student attending his course on Catholicism that the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts violate natural moral law. Read more...
The new era of State-imposed political correctness
~Ronan Mullen tabled a lengthy series of amendments to the Civil Partnership Bill in the Seanad yesterday. An experienced political reporter told me that he had never before witnessed any TD or senator being subjected to the level of interruptions, bullying and harassment that Mullen was subjected to by some of his fellow senators. Read more...
Activists attacks The Frontline over ‘bias’
~Since Monday night’s edition, The Frontline has been under fierce attack over its alleged bias against the pro-gay side. The attack rests on two pieces of evidence. One is that the panel consisted of two pro-traditional marriage proponents, namely me and Senator Jim Walsh, and only one person in support of the family diversity position, namely Senator Ivana Bacik. Read more...
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...
Showing 361 - 380 of 526 Articles | Page 19 of 27
