Is the internet helping to draw young people to the faith? This is the question Catholic convert Mahon McCann asks in his talk delivered at Saturday’s Iona Institute youth conference called ‘God or the Machine?’. Among other things, Mahon describes how it was online faith-based material that initially led him out of atheism and into Christianity. In an...
Best-selling author and Christian convert, Paul Kingsnorth, is one the leading critics of the ways in which technology, led by AI, is altering our lives and even threatening what it means to be human. On Saturday (October 10), he delivered the keynote address at The Iona Institute’s latest youth conference. The theme of the day...
The Department of Education is currently running a sort of Citizens’ Assembly on education called the ‘Convention on Education’. It is supposed to help shape Irish education for decades to come. The most recent session last month featured a panel on “School Values and Culture”, on which no representative of the Churches was present, despite...
The Joint Committee on Health met again this week to consider a Sinn Féin bill that aims to get rid of the three-day wait for an abortion. Last week, the HSE argued that there was no clinical reason for the wait, and the week before, two representatives from the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP)...
Two stark warnings were issued this week concerning Ireland’s coming demographic crunch. One came from Tanaiste and Finance Minister, Simon Harris, and the other from Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI). Notably, neither seemed to have any solution to what is on its way. Simon Harris gave his warning in an address to the Economic and Social...
Sinn Féin currently has a bill before the Dáil aimed at removing the three days a woman must wait before obtaining an abortion. If you recall, this was a ‘sweetener’ offered to voters in the abortion referendum of 2018 to induce them to get rid of the Eighth Amendment. The Oireachtas Health Committee considered the matter...
In some excellent news, the House of Commons has today voted against a new attempt to legalise assisted suicide. This is a huge victory for right-to-life campaigners, and interestingly lots of Labour MPs, who ardently believe in a ‘right’ to abortion, voted against recognising a ‘right to die’, mostly because they fear such a law...
The Catholic Education Partnership has told the UN that Ireland is discriminating against Catholic schools by forbidding them from admitting Catholic children first if a school is overenrolled. Other faith schools are allowed to favour children from their own religion in the same circumstances. The CEP made the accusation at a meeting of the UN...
The stereotype suggests the housewives are an unhappy bunch. Think of the old hit TV series, ‘Desperate Housewives’. But a new study paints a different picture. Stay-at-home mothers are less likely to suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts, and their use of certain medications and alcohol is also lower than the average. Here in Ireland,...
Last week The Iona Institute published a widely covered briefing note called ‘Baptism Trends in Ireland’. What grabbed the headlines was the dramatic finding that the number of Catholic baptisms has fallen by 30pc in the last ten years. But when you think about it, is the figure so surprising? Over the same period, births...
