Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders in Belgium have jointly denounced the planned extension of the current euthanasia law to cover children and mentally ill people. Apart from Brussels Archbishop Andre-Joseph Léonard, who has already criticised the planned law, the group included the Brussels grand rabbi, the leader of the Belgian Muslim Executive, the...
Three leading Catholic educationalists have attacked a Department of Education consultation process that invites parents to consider controversial recommendations aimed at making denominational schools more ‘inclusive’. The recommendations include making prayers more ‘inclusive’ and preventing the ethos of denominational schools from permeating the school day. In their submission to the consultation, Mary Immaculate College...
People who “do God, do good” more often than not, according to a minister in the UK’s Coalition Government. Baroness Warsi (pictured), the Minister for Faith, said that David Cameron’s administration was one of the “most pro-faith governments in the West” And she said that faith was being put back at the “heart of government,”...
Only 21pc of Irish adults aged 30-39 trust the Church or other religious organisations, but this is still nearly twice the 12pc who trust the Government, a new survey shows. Interestingly, while 18pc of those living in Dublin trust the Government, only 9pc of those outside Dublin do. The number of those who trust the...
The Gardaí who seized two Roma children from their parents on suspicion that they had been kidnapped “acted in good faith”, Justice Minister Alan Shatter has said. He was speaking after a HSE report into the issue blamed the Gardaí for not consulting properly with social workers in one of the cases, the Irish Independent...
A bill currently before the House of Lords proposing the legalisation of assisted suicide would be a “blank cheque” with regard to safeguards, according to three leading legal authorities. The proposals, put forward by Lord Falconer, a former mentor of Tony Blair, have been criticised by Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former head of the High Court...
The provincial government of the Canadian province of Quebec tabled its controversial secular values charter, Bill 60, on Thursday. The bill would force government employees to remove conspicuous religious symbols such as headscarves, yarmulkes, turbans, and larger-than-average crucifixes if they want to keep their jobs. Premier Pauline Marois, the leader of the Parti Quebecois, told...
A lesbian woman who donated an egg to her partner has been granted parental rights to her genetic child by the Florida Supreme Court. She was not granted the rights by virtue of being the natural mother but simply because she intended to be the mother. The natural tie was given no weight by the...
The importance society places “on the role of mothers and fathers in bringing up children” is at the heart of the debate over same-sex marriage, the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr Denis Nulty (pictured), has said. In the first intervention by a senior Church figure in the debate since the Government announced its intention...
Lone parents are more vulnerable to stress and therefore marginally less responsive to cues from their infants, according to the latest report from the Growing Up in Ireland study. However, the report added that “the strength of the relationship (between being a single parent and experiencing stress) was relatively small”. The report, which is the...
