The College of Psychoanalysis debated the causes of social breakdown and crime during a meeting in the Irish Writer’s Museum in Dublin on Saturday. A paper was presented by psychoanalyst and lecturer, Rob Weatherill which blamed psychoanalysis itself for many of the pathologies facing modern society, including family breakdown. Weatherill stressed the importance of fathers...
The number of applications for divorce and judicial separations has more than trebled since the introduction of divorce legislation exactly 10 years ago, according to official figures. Court figures show that, while the combined number of applications for divorce and judicial separation in 1997 was 1,694 (431 and 1263 respectively), the comparable figure in 2005...
Married couples who stayed together are unsung “heroes” according to the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. Speaking at the launch of National Marriage Week, Dr Williams said that the institution of marriage was “for life; and that doesn’t just mean life-long, important as that is. It means for...
The Government plans to insert five new provisions in the Constitution aimed at strengthening children’s rights and providing greater protection against child sexual abuse, according to reports. A Government briefing document on the proposed wording says that the Government plans to allow the Oireachtas to introduce a zone of ‘absolute protection’, below which it would...
A French politician has been fined almost $4,000 under a French law banning ‘incitement of hatred’ against minorities. Christian Vanneste, a member of Jacques Chirac’s ruling UMP party, received the fine in a court in Douai, in northern France. He was also forced to pay more than $2,000 in court costs. The law, which was...
The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminister, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, has accused the Labour Government of imposing “a new morality”. He was responding to the news that the Government was not prepared to give Catholic adoption agencies an opt out from new equality legislation which requires them...
UK Cabinet ministers have poured cold water over suggestions that Catholic Church adoption agencies might be exempted from new legislation requiring them to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents. Education Secretary Alan Johnson, whose portfolio includes adoption issues, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he did not believe that there was any case...
An overwhelming majority of Irish people oppose a recent proposal to lower the age of consent for sexual activity to 16, according to a new opinion poll. The poll, published in the Sunday Tribune, showed that a massive 68 per cent of people are opposed to the proposal. The news comes in the wake of...
Senior Church of England bishops last night added their weight to Catholic opposition to legislation requiring religious adoption agencies in Britain to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents. The head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York said that “the rights of conscience...
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has cited the recent Iona Institute poll on marriage and the family to back claims that many Europeans, the Irish included still back traditional values. Speaking last week in Dublin at the Forum for Europe on the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Archbishop Martin argued that, on the contrary, much...
