Two years ago I wrote a letter to the Irish Times in response to comments made by Senator Ivana Bacik in her letter to the same newspaper. In her letter, entitled ‘Creeping Fundamentalism’, Bacik set out what she described as fears of a growing ‘religious fundamentalism’ creeping into Irish Society. She based her observations on...
The Witherspoon Institute in the US is opposed to new health insurance guidelines which will force almost all religious organisations who provide healthcare for their employees to fund contraceptive services, sterilisation and even aborifacients despite what the ethos of these organisations might have to say about the subject.. But Linda Greenhouse, the former Supreme Court...
A new report called ‘One parent or five?’ has just been published in America. The author is Elizabeth Marquardt, an expert on how Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) is causing a revolution in our view of parenthood. Elizabeth has previously been a guest of The Iona Institute. This revolution was on display in two ways in...
Why did marriage evolve? There are two basic answers to this question. One is that down to very recent times it was mostly a response to economic necessity. The competing view is that it developed mainly as a way to encourage men and women to raise their children together. An article in the current issue...
On Prime Time last night the seven presidential candidates were asked whether presidents should have to make reference to God when taking their oath of office. The question was, of course, extremely leading. Why ask them this at all? It is a total non-issue in the election campaign. Is anyone at all bringing it up...
So, Ireland, led by Justice Minister Alan Shatter (pictured) has appeared before the UN Human Rights Council to be advised on how to ‘improve’ our human rights record, and we have accepted some of what the Council members suggested to us, taken other recommendations under advisement, and rejected a number of others. One of the...
David Quinn was interviewed by George Hook last Tuesday on Newstalk about plans by the UK government to put ‘Parent A’ and ‘Parent B’ on passport forms. David explains how this is part of a much wider assault on the special value of motherhood and fatherhood. You can listen to the interview here. David points...
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:...
