The French Government has announced that it is to set to monitor ultra-traditionalist Catholic groups, as well as other religious organisations, for signs of “religious pathology”, Reuters reports. Socialist Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that a shooting spree last year by a French Islamist, in which three soldiers and four Jews were murdered showed that...
Ireland is an expensive place to be a mother because the earning power of mothers suffers compared with men, according to a new report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). According to the report, entitled Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now, the arrival of children has a more drastic impact on the...
Moves to legally redefine marriage harm and destabilise that institution, Pope Benedict has warned. In a message to mark the World Day of Peace next month, the Pope said that there was a need “to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face...
The Church of England will be legally prevented from carrying out same-sex marriage under the UK Government’s plans to redefine the institution. The move is being made to appease senior Anglicans and Tory MPs, according to the Times. The Government announced the special protection as they published legislation to allow for same-sex marriage which could...
A Catholic school is Canada is considering petitioning the Supreme Court after the Quebec Court of Appeal issued a decision obliging it to stop teaching a Catholic course on religion. The ruling, issued last week, told the school that it must replace the course with a state-imposed Ethics and Religious Culture course (ERC) which is...
A decision as to whether Ireland’s ban on assisted suicide is constitutional will be made by the High Court on January 10th. A three-judge High Court has been hearing the challenge to the ban brought by a woman terminally ill with multiple sclerosis. Evidence and legal submissions in the six-day case concluded yesterday, and the...
Fewer than 50pc of adults in England and Wales are married for the first time since records began, new figures from the Office of National Statistics show. The ONS reveals that the number of people who are married in England and Wales had fallen from just over half of the population a decade ago to...
Only a small minority of parents participated in a pilot survey in five areas chosen by the Department of Education to determine parental preferences on primary schools patronage, the Catholic Bishops’ Council for Education has said. Fr Michael Drumm (pictured) of the Catholic Schools Partnership estimated that at most a quarter of parents took part...
The current ban on assisted suicide makes matters “crystal clear” for doctors and its removal could result in vulnerable people opting to have their lives ended so as not to be a burden on others, a palliative care specialist has told the High Court. Giving evidence yesterday in the case of Marie Fleming, Dr Tony...
The US Supreme Court is set to consider the issue of same-sex marriage for the first time after it agreed last week to review two challenges to federal and state laws that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It said it would review the ruling which overturned California’s Proposition 8,...
