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)...
The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter (pictured) yesterday said the row over proposals to break the seal of confession is “an entirely bogus issue”. With respect to the Minister, it is not. How can it be when Mr Shatter himself, as well as Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, have all insisted...
In my column this week in The Irish Independent I write about the seal of confession issue and the proposal by the Government to require by law that it be breached when a confession of child abuse is heard. As I point out in the column, laws of this sort are extremely rare and historically...
Today’s criticism by The Irish Times of Cardinal Sean Brady’s defence of the seal of confession is puzzling to say the least. Cardinal Brady described Government proposals which would require Catholic priests to break the seal where child abuse is confessed as an attack on religious freedom. He said that the inviolability of the seal...
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s (pictured) has written about the London riots and to judge from a headline The Guardian put on his analysis you could be forgiven for thinking Blair rejected David Cameron’s “broken society” rhetoric in its entirety. It’s true that Blair seemed to reject suggestions that there was an overall moral crisis,...
