One of Britain’s leading Catholic comprehensive schools has been ordered to change its admissions procedures so that it no longer prioritises pupils and families who do volunteer work for their local church. Following a complaint by the British Humanist Association, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator has ruled that the London Oratory School, should not...
A Swedish parent has been fined €11,000 for homeschooling his daughter even though Swedish law does not explictly ban homeschooling. Jonas Himmelstrand, author and leading campaigner for the rights of homeschooling parents, and his wife have been fined by the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court for home educating their daughter for one year, the school year...
A controversial proposal which would ban any religious symbols being worn at work by public employees in the Canadian province of Quebec has been defended by the governing party there. Banned religious symbols under the proposed law will reportedly include turbans, hijabs, kippas, and crucifixes. The proposal has been heavily criticised by one of Canada’s...
Any law which would allow physician-assisted suicide would put vulnerable patients at risk, a leading British medical expert has said. Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr Bill Noble, a senior lecturer in palliative medicine at the University of Sheffield, warned that if assisted suicide was legalised “society’s neglect of older people, poverty, and...
Catholic schools continue to have a role in Irish life, by providing young people with “pointers to what is true and just and loving,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin (pictured) has said. And he said that some people were intent on blaming the Church for being “at the root of everything that went wrong in Irish society”....
A Christian Girl Guide troop in the UK who had been refusing to their traditional oath to God with a new secular pledge have now accepted the new wording. The national body governing the Girl Guides, Girlguiding UK, had insisted that no exceptions could be made to plans to introduce the new oath due to...
Germany will permit parents to select a “third gender” on birth certificates for their children, should the child want to identify with a certain gender in the future. Germany is the first country in Europe to pass this type of legislation. The new law, which is to take effect throughout the country in November, will...
Police have arrested two people who were planning to take a 71-year-old man, believed to have dementia, to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland. The police described the man as vulnerable, and took action because they are concerned that he may lack mental capacity. Police questioned the pair, thought to be the wife and son...
A photography business in the US state of New Mexico must photograph same-sex commitment ceremonies or stop taking wedding photographs altogether, the New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled. In a ruling on Thursday, the court held that when Elane Photography, “refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony, it violated the NMHRA [New Mexico Human Rights...
The Government’s abortion legislation was not needed to safeguard the lives of pregnant women, the Pro Life Campaign has said. They were responding to reports in the Irish Times today that the first termination of pregnancy under the new legislation took place recently at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street. The report suggested that...
