Pat Rabbitte got himself into a bit of hot water when he told RTE last weekend that he thought it would be a regressive step if the Church started ‘dictating’ to politicians again. Seeing as he had been ask to comment on Cardinal Sean Brady’s remark on the same programme that the Church might lobby...
There is a growing marriage gap between the middle class and many of those who live in our poorest areas. Basically, the middle class still aspire to marry and get married. In the poorest areas the aspiration to marry is still there – to an extent – but a growing number of people think it’s...
Ok, attacking Hugh Hefner for saying it is traditionalists, and not the likes of him, who reduce the meaning of sex is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but let’s do it anyway. The website Politico reports that in the current issue of Playboy Hefner editorialises against traditionalists who are seeking, he reckons,...
We know that severe financial difficulties, terrible communication and infidelity can lead to marital breakdown, but video games? According to this study, conflict over video games, and media generally, can play a significant role in relationship conflict. There is even a website, www.gamerwidow.com, full of stories of those who struggle with the addiction of their...
There are tentative moves in Ireland to change the law so that more than two people can be recognised as the legal parents of a child. The Law Reform Commission, for example, has made a recommendation to this effect. There are similar moves in the US to break ‘the rule of two’. The ‘rule of...
Freedom of religion used to be understood by one and all as the freedom to worship privately, and the freedom, within reason, to manifest that faith in the public square. It was taken for granted that one’s work should not compromise one’s deeply held religious convictions. In recent times, this notion of religious freedom has...
One of the best blogs around is the Public Discourse by the Witherspoon Institute in the US. Its latest entry deals with the often very murky world of surrogate motherhood. It cites the case of a couple who had commissioned a woman to have a child for them, but who divorced and then told the...
At this stage I have read quite a few books and innumerable articles about the same-sex marriage debate. One of the best of the books is a new one called simply, Debating Same-Sex Marriage. It is co-authored by John Corvino, a lecturer in philosophy at Wayne State University in America, and Maggie Gallagher of the...
The new poll by Gallup/Red C suggesting that Ireland is now less religious than Iceland certainly generated lots of headlines, but what did it really tell us about how religious we are? After all, as David Quinn pointed out in his Irish Independent analysis piece on the matter, roughly a third of Irish people still...
Robert Oscar Lopez has written a very heart-felt account of being raised by two mothers and no father and the consequences of this in his life. Obviously the account of one person is purely anecdotal and some of the unfortunate twists and turns that occurred in his life would not have happened to others who...
