More than half of Irish people believe that religious education should be part of the school day, according to a new poll. The findings come after suggestions made by RTE that the Catholic Church had sought to impose separate religion classes during school hours on three new VEC-run schools. Senior education figures for the Church...
A new poll shows that large numbers of Catholics in Ireland do not believe some of the central teaching of the Church. However the poll did not break this down by Mass attendence. The poll, carried out by MRBI for the Irish Times, also showed that most Catholics do not attend weekly Mass. According to...
Catholics may be forced into civil disobedience by the US Government mandate requiring Catholic institutions to cover abortifacients, contraception and sterilisation in their health insurance plans, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has said. In a bulletin, the USCCB say that “[s]ome laws impose such injustices on individuals and organisations that disobeying the laws...
A Christian mental health worker in the UK who was fired for distributing pro-life leaflets at work is to sue the NHS accusing it of having a “dangerously totalitarian” approach to the issue. Margaret Forrester (pictured) was dismissed for “gross professional misconduct” after she gave a colleague a booklet pointing out the physical and...
Proposals to give effect to recommendations about the age of consent are set to be put before the Cabinet, Justice Minister Alan Shatter (pictured) has said. One recommendation is likely to be that the age of consent should be dropped to 16. This is despite the fact that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny strongly opposed reducing...
Children should be raised by their natural mother and father within marriage and should only be deprived of this for “grave” reasons, England’s most senior Catholic cleric has warned in a major speech. Speaking to over 500 married couples, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Revd Vincent Nichols (pictured), said: “We know that the context...
Over a quarter of marriages conducted in Ireland in 2009 were civil marriages, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The figures, contained in a report entitled Marriages 2009, show that 28.7pc of all marriages were civil ceremonies, an increase of 17pc compared 2008. However, among people getting marriage for the first...
Civil servants who are attempting to exclude faith from public life are simply ignorant of how Christianity has shaped British history, the head of the Church of England has said. Speaking on Tuesday in the House of Lords, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said that a “plain lack of historical and cultural...
Healthcare workers should not be legally prosecuted if they provide “sexual health services” such as STI treatment to children under 16, if they deem it to be in that child’s best interests, according to a new policy statement on sexual health published by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. The document, Better Sexual Health...
Large numbers of separated and divorced men and women are putting their sexual health at risk by sleeping with multiple partners and contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as a result, a leading consultant warned yesterday. Dr Jack Lambert, of the Mater Hospital, said people in their 30s, 40s and 50s “are going out and acting...
