Europe must recover its “vigour” and “idealism”, by renewing its commitment to human dignity, entering into “meaningful” and “open” dialogue with its religious traditions, and being unafraid to acknowledge its Christian history, Pope Francis has told the European Parliament. In a wide-ranging address that mixed praise for European institutions with strong criticism, the Pope echoed his...
The National Centre for Medical Genetics stopped referring patients abroad for embryonic genetic screening in 2006 after receiving legal advice that the referrals could be unconstitutional. According to the Irish Times, staff at the Centre, which is based at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, had to cease direct referrals for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis...
Oxford’s Christ Church College has voted to cancel an abortion debate organised by a pro-life student group, after a planned protest was said to threaten security. Christ Church College’s JCR, or student union, retracted permission to host the debate, which was due to feature journalists Tim Stanley and Brendan O’Neill speaking for and against the...
Children have the right to grow up with a mother and a father, Pope Francis told an interfaith conference on marriage held at the Vatican. “Family is an anthropological fact — a socially and culturally related fact,” the Pope said. “We cannot qualify it based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time...
The Church of England has warned of the potential for divisiveness in the drive for ‘British values’ in schools in that country. In an essay penned by the church’s chief education officer, Nigel Genders, in response to Ministry of Education guidelines on imparting ‘British values’ to pupils, the church expresses concern that the move contains...
“We’ve been liberated too much.” That is the assessment of Barbara Hulanicki, once a leading light of the fashion world of the so-called Swinging Sixties, who now argues that the sexual revolution sparked then has moved to worrying extremes over the intervening years. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ms Hulanicki points to wide...
Pope Francis will address a major interreligious conference on the place of man and woman in marriage next week. Beginning on Monday in the Vatican, the conference, Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage, will see the Pontiff address delegates from 23 countries and 14 faith traditions who will assemble to discuss the meaning of...
An opinion poll has found that one out of ten British people think that elderly people should be offered a “reward” if they opt to end their own lives. But it also found that 58 per cent of the public think that it would be “impossible” to legalise assisted suicide in a way that would...
Any change to the laws protecting the ethos of religious schools must take account of the wishes of parents, the head of the Catholic church’s education body has warned. Fr Michael Drumm, head of the Catholic Schools Partnership, said that the government should “keep in mind that schools do not exist primarily to employ teachers...
The State has won its appeal against a High Court ruling that the genetic mother of twins born to a surrogate should be registered as their legal mother on their birth certificates. The Court found that the birth mother should be presumed to be the legal mother, but that the legal status of surrogacy and...
