I attended a seminar in Barcelona the other week at which one of the most fascinating papers was delivered by Catherine Hakim from the sociology department at the London School of Economics. It was titled ‘What do women really want? Designing family policies for all women’. Hakim is a long-standing critic of policies designed to...
Today’s news that a Catholic adoption agency in the UK has been allowed to continue to refuse to place children with same-sex couples because of a legal loophole is good news for other similar agencies in the UK, who will now hopefully be able to continue to provide their services to the community. Is it...
Last July, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, in response to a sermon criticising his Civil Partnership legislation, said when he legislated, he didn’t “bring whatever religion I have to the table”. Earlier this month, Archbishop Charles Chaput, of Denver, addressed this topic before the Houston Baptist University. Specifically, he tackled one of the most noteworthy...
Comedian, Frank Skinner has a piece in The Times today saying he wants Christians to be persecuted – he’s a weekly Mass-goer himself – because he reckons Christians thrive when’re they’re a persecuted and despised minority. He’s referring to the growing number of legal actions being taken against Christians in the UK, from nurses being suspended...
The pre-election document produced by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, Choosing the Common Good, has been described by the BBC as an “attack on British society’s ‘lack of trust’”. The BBC says the document accuses British society of being “unneighbourly”. The effect of the BBC report is to portray the bishops as a...
The Government has refused point-blank to give civil registrars a right of conscientious objection vis-a-vis civil partnership ceremonies. The line is that once you are a public servant you must do whatever the State requires of you, come what may, with no exceptions. In other jurisdictions this kind of thinking is starting to permeate the...
The public spat between Labour’s Secretary for Scotland, Jim Murphy and the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, over Labour’s apparent new respect for religion, is revealing at a number of levels. For a start, Mr Murphy’s suggestion that Labour is the natural home for religious values is, as Cardinal O’Brien suggests, wholly at...
A major report on the family in Ireland was issued by the ESRI yesterday. Called ‘Family Figures: Family Dynamics and Family Types in Ireland, 1986-2006’, it draws on Census data to paint a detailed picture of family type and structure today. It contains some of the same data that is contained in our own 2007...
The wording (see page 15 on link) of a possible children’s right amendment has now been published. It is lengthy and complex and gives rises to immediate concerns that it might give the State more power than it really needs to protect children, power that has been abused in other jurisdictions. It is said that...
A comment appeared in The Guardian (of all places) last month defending anti-blasphemy laws. The author makes the point that while the public is all for free speech, they place a much higher value on public order. In the past, we believed that respect for religion was vital to public order. Today, most people don’t...
