The Christian ideal of marriage is under “great threat” from cohabitation, the disposable marriages of celebrities and the campaign to legalise same-sex marriage, a leading Australian bishop told an audience of thousands at the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin yesterday. In his address, Dr Barry Hickey (pictured), Archbishop Emeritus of Perth, also said that the...
There were 25pc more reports of child abuse in 2011 and more than 13,000 calls were made to the Women’s Aid helpline, figures revealed today show. Women’s Aid said that more than 2,000 women who called their domestic violence helpline said their children had also suffered at the hands of a perpetrator, and another 3,000...
Social workers in the UK will now assess whether troubled families are forming their children’s consciences and instilling moral values under a major overhaul of child protection rules unveiled today. For the first time ever, new guidelines are set to recognise that the lack of a basic sense of right and wrong in children is...
Adults who were raised by same-sex parents are more likely to have been on social welfare, more likely to be unemployed and more likely to have received psychotherapy than those from intact biological families, according to new US research. The groundbreaking study, “How Different are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings...
Fewer than a third of gay people would get married if the British government legalises same-sex marriage, while almost 40 percent believe redefining marriage is a not priority for gay people, according to a new poll. The survey, the first ever professionally-conducted poll of gay people’s attitudes to same-sex marriage, was carried out by polling...
Nearly one in ten young men in America have become fathers before their 20th birthday, according a new study by think tank Child Trends. The report, The Characteristics and Circumstances of Teen Fathers: At the Birth of Their First Child and Beyond, looked at figures from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth—1997, a nationally representative...
A fresh attempt to use the Irish courts to redefine marriage is set to be made by Senator Katherine Zappone and Dr Ann Louise Gilligan. Their new case is set to challenge the Civil Registration Act 2004, and the Civil Partnership Act 2010, both of which prohibit people of the same sex marrying each other...
The promised Constitutional convention which will look at proposals to legalise same-sex marriage, remove the clause which refers to women in the home and remove the offence of blasphemy is set to be established next month. However, a Government spokesman told The Irish Times that the convention may not finish its work before the end...
Sales of the Morning After Pill – an abortifacient – have soared threefold to 13 per day or almost 5,000 per year, according to The Irish Daily Mail. The increase is the result of permitting pharmacists to sell the drug over the counter without a doctor’s prescription and because its price has been cut from...
Traditional family values are vital for the renewal of modern society, Pope Benedict has told over a million people at the World Meeting of Families in Milan on Sunday. “We have been given the task of building church communities that are more and more like families… based on a marriage between man and woman,” the...
