The Conference of Catholic Bishops has said that it is “very worried” about the conscience implications of the Civil Partnership Bill, and have criticised the substance of the Bill, suggesting that it will undermine marriage. At a press conference following their spring meeting, Bishop Christopher Jones, of Elphin said that the bishops were also considering...
A delegation from the Church of Ireland is to met Department of Justice officials yesterday to urge the Government to accept a freedom of conscience clause in the Civil Partnership Bill, according to a report in the Sunday Business Post. Under the Bill as currently written, Church organisations may be forced to allow Church properties...
Bishop Leo O’Reilly, the chairman of the Catholic bishops commission on education, has expressed surprise at a speech by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday in which he said his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the...
The movement to legalise same-sex marriage is not about obtaining benefits and rights for same-sex couples, but obtaining public approval for different forms of sexual conduct and relationships, a leading US legal academic has said. Speaking on the Pat Kenny radio show, Professor Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, said that, if the movement...
Officials at the Department of Education are looking at ten urban areas where the number of Catholic primary schools will be cut, it has been revealed. But under arrangements announced by the Minister for Education, Batt O’Keefe earlier this year, it will be the patrons of the schools, normally the local bishop, and local communities...
A leading Church of England bishop has warned that Anglican clergy may be sued for discrimination if they refuse to “marry” homosexuals under a proposed law. Other religious leaders fear that the proposal may force churches that refuse to bless civil partnerships to close. The Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Michael Scott-Joynt said the...
The current social welfare system is encouraging fraud by cohabiting parents, a joint Oireachtas committee was told yesterday in reference to the social welfare payment for one-parent families. Treoir, a support organisation for unmarried single parents, was responding to a report commissioned by the Social and Family Affairs Committee on financial disincentives to cohabitation and...
Society has a vested interest in supporting marriage as the surest basis for family life, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have said. In their pre-election document, Choosing the Common Good, the bishops write that the family is “the first school of life and love, where the capacity to relate to others, to develop...
Social workers of the Western Health Board have been criticised for their handling of a case in Roscommon in which a father has been found guilty of 47 counts rape and sexual assault when his son was aged between 12 and 15. The family’s mother was jailed last year for similar offences. At the hearing,...
A militant atheist who left obscene leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, the Pope and the Koran in the prayer room of an international airport has gone on trial charged with religious harassment. Harry Taylor, a 59-year-old self-styled philosophy tutor left leaflets with “sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant cartoons”, in the prayer room at Liverpool’s John Lennon...
