Elizabeth Scalia, who writes for US magazine First Things, has written a good piece on the dangers posed by the Obama Administration’s move to force insurers to cover contraception, sterilisation and abortofaecient drugs. In the US, many, if not most, people have their health insurance covered by their employer. This policy will force Catholic organisations...
Official figures from Britain published this week showed that, out of 3,660 babies under the age of one in care in the UK last year, only 60, or less than two per cent, were placed with adoptive parents. This feature in The Daily Telegraph shows that this is a remarkable fall even from 2007, when...
US Census data on poverty was released a few days ago. The prestigious Brookings Institute in Washington held a press conference to analyse the data, and Ron Haskins, a Senior Fellow of the Institute, drew attention to something that is equally relevant to Ireland, namely the link between poverty and female-headed households. He told journalists:...
The proposed Irish law recognising the rights of transgendered persons looks set to be based on the law in the UK, which is one of the most radical in Europe. But for some Irish activists, it’s not radical enough. The law in the UK is so radical it allows a person with male genitals to...
One of the big new findings from the latest report from the Government’s longtitudinal study on children, Growing Up in Ireland, was that children feel less close to their parents if their parents work long hours. This is hardly surprising but it is a reason for worry, especially if, as we hear our politicians continuously...
Anyone who has ever watched British comedian Frank Skinner would regard him as a very unlikely defender of religion. His humour, full of explicit sexual references, is usually euphemistically described as “laddish”. However, Skinner is a practicing Catholic, and isn’t shy about admitting it. He has written and spoken publicly before about his faith, so...
The Daily Telegraph’s website featured an article the other day about women who suddenly decide in middle age to divorce their “boring” husbands and “find themselves”. Call it the “Eat, Pray, Love” phenomenon, after the book of the same name. The story, based on real life, is about a woman who decides that her life...
Yet another report has been issued by the UN which paints Sweden as a paradise for children. The latest report, issued by UNICEF, is called ‘Children’s Well-being in UK, Sweden and Spain: The Role of Inequality and Materialism’. The study does have interesting things to say about materialism. For example, it contrasts the manner in...
An item on the BBC the other day drew attention to the explosive growth of Christianity in China. The Government estimates that there are 25 million Chinese Christians, but a much bigger though still conservative estimate puts it at 60 million. According to the BBC: “There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday...
Elizabeth Marquardt, writing on the Family Scholars Blog, mentions an article in the Wall Street entitled “The Child Focused Divorce” in which a couple agree that they “wanted to minimize the damage the split would do to their daughters”. This all sounds very fine, but as Elizabeth (whose mother divorced twice when Elizabeth was young)...
