The Iona Blog

Irish Times can’t decide whether family is changing or staying the same

The Irish Times can’t seem to get its lines straight on the state of family life in Ireland. On the one hand we get articles informing us that the family in Ireland is changing, that it is getting more diverse and we need to recognise this fact. On the other hand, we have Carl O’Brien reassuring...

Read more...

The self-serving myths of the sex revolution

It is not a truth, but unfortunately it is almost universally acknowledged, that the sexual revolution’s primary beneficiaries were women because it gave them the ‘right to choose’. Hence, any time anyone challenges even the tiniest aspect of it they are immediately smeared as being “anti-woman”. This is the current smear being propagated against those...

Read more...

Another example of media double standards

Recent days have rightly seen blanket coverage of the shooting of seven people including four at a Jewish school in France and the subsequent death of the man responsible. However, the tone of the coverage was in marked contrast to the reporting of the horrific incident of mass murder which took place last year in...

Read more...

How divorce damages, as told by ‘Don Draper’

Jon Hamm is the actor who plays Don Draper, the central character in the cult TV series, Madmen, which is about a Manhattan advertising firm in the 1960s. Hamm has been living with his partner for the last fifteen years and is in no mood to marry. It turns out a big reason for this...

Read more...

Fr Michael Drumm on the rights of denominational schools

Denominational schools have a right to protect their ethos, and require legislative provisions to enable them to do so, Fr Michael Drumm (pictured), chairman of the Catholic Schools Partnership, told an Iona Institute conference on denominational schools yesterday. Fr Drumm told the conference, entitled “Denominational Education in a Pluralist Society” that proposals to amend rules which...

Read more...

Why has same-sex marriage become a big issue so quickly? (Tom O’Gorman)

How did same-sex marriage become such a major issue so quickly? Only a decade ago, almost no-one thought it was an important topic. Now, to hear certain people tell it, it is a civil right as vital as the right to free speech or the right to vote. How did this happen? Brendan O’Neill (pictured),...

Read more...

The Iona Institute in the media

Representatives from The Iona Institute, or speakers at our events, have featured on a number of high profile radio and TV shows in the last few weeks to discuss issues ranging from surrogate motherhood, to the gender pay gap to anti-Catholicism. Here is a selection of them. Frontline: David Quinn, Ivan Bacik, Diarmuid Ferriter and...

Read more...

The musings of a conflicted liberal on marriage

Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly addressed the annual Accord conference in Belfast last weekend. O’Reilly, one of Ireland’s best known journalists in a previous life is probably best described as a conflicted liberal. She has supported most of the liberal causes down the years, but she’s smart enough to know that the liberal reforms have a downside...

Read more...

National Women’s Council badly mistaken on gender pay gap

New figures from the European Commission show that the gender pay gap in Ireland is 17 percent. This is in line with the EU average. Yesterday on Morning Ireland Orla O’Connor of the National Women’s Council said one of the major factors contributing to this is a lack of affordable daycare in Ireland. However, proof...

Read more...

Scotland’s labour wards: No Catholics need apply

Two Catholic midwives in Scotland have been told by a court that they must supervise and support staff in the labour ward of their hospital who perform abortions irrespective of their religious convictions. As reported by Catholic News Agency, Scotland’s highest civil court ruled that the women’s religious liberties were not being infringed because “the...

Read more...