Article 41.2 of the Constitution, which deals with women in the home, should be amended to make it gender- neutral, not deleted, the Iona Institute has said. In a statement, they said that the article, which is set to be discussed at the weekend by the Constitutional Convention, “says something very important, which is that...
Article 41.2 of the Constitution which protects the role of mothers in the home should not be removed, carers’ organisation Cúram says in its submission to the Constitutional Convention. The Convention is meeting this weekend to discuss Article 41.2. In a statement, Cúram have said that Article 41.2 “underpins supports for parents and carers in...
Britain is becoming increasingly reliant on Churches and religious groups to meet “crucial” needs once met by the state, a minister in the UK government has acknowledged. Baroness Warsi (pictured) told a meeting in Westminister that Christians, Muslims, Jews and others have a right to publicly practise their faith insisting that “people who do...
The lower house of the French parliament has approved the first reading of a bill to introduce same-sex marriage. The bill would also legalise same-sex adoption. President Francois Hollande’s Socialists have pushed the measure through the National Assembly in a 329-to-229 vote. The move came despite a series of demonstrations in recent weeks by...
Marriage in Ireland is under more pressure than ever, new figures produced by the Church’s marriage counselling agency Accord reveal. The figures, published yesterday, showed a significant rise in demand by individuals and couples for Accord’s marriage counselling service over the last three years. The agency delivered 50,422 counselling hours in 2012 compared to...
A judge in the US state of Florida has approved an adoption allowing three people — a gay man and a lesbian couple in a same-sex marriage— to be listed on the birth certificate of their 23-month-old daughter. Local Judge Antonio Marin approved a private settlement between the three individuals and the court adoption clerk...
The US Catholic bishops have rejected the “compromise” proposed by the Obama Administration regarding its mandate requiring religious groups to place their employees in health insurance schemes covering abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilisation. In a statement yesterday, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Timothy Dolan (pictured) of New York, said that...
Irish marriage rates have fallen to the EU average, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show. According to new data on marriage from 2010, Ireland now has a marriage rate of 4.5 per thousand people, which is roughly the same as the EU average of 4.4. This represents a fall from 4.9 in 2009...
Attempts to transfer the ownership of a former Christian Brothers school building to a new patron in Dublin city have run into legal difficulties, according to RTE. The Department of Education wants the Edmund Rice Schools Trust to relinquish control of the building. School patron Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and the board of management have already...
Young couples who get through the first 10 years of marriage have the same chance of staying together as their grandparents’ generation, a study of divorce patterns over the last 50 years suggests. The study says that divorce rates for those who have been together more than a decade have remained almost completely unchanged...
