On Wednesday, the TV3 current affairs programme MidWeek dealt with the issue of same-sex adoption. Brenda Power, opposing it, said that State officials shouldn’t have to decide for a child whether it can do without a mother or a father. But perhaps the most interesting snippet from the discussion was a concession from Bryan Finnegan,...
Last Thursday, a leading UK judge, Lord Justice Laws, ruled that religious belief was “irrational”, had “no basis in fact” and that laws protecting freedom of conscience and religion were bound to lead to theocracy. His comments came as he ruled against Gary McParlane, a Christian sex therapist who refused to work with homosexuals because...
A British judge has utterly and completely dismissed as “irrational” and “capricious” any and all conscience claims a Christian can make in the course of their daily lives. The judge, Lord Justice Walls, said yesterday that “In the eyes of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of...
The Pill is fifty years old. It was approved for use in the United States on May 9, 1960. It is arguably the most revolutionary invention ever in terms of its effect on human behaviour. Without it, the sex revolution would have been impossible. Without it, it would have remained almost unthinkable to separate sex...
At the beginning of this month, just before Gordon Brown called the UK General Election, some of Britain’s leading Christians came together to sign a document called The Westminster Declaration. The declaration is a defence of marriage, the right to life and freedom of conscience. It is another sign that Christians are waking up to...
Has a doctor a right to run his practice along fully Catholic lines? Is belief in traditional marriage now deemed problematic in the eyes of the law? Is it problematic in the eyes of society? To judge from the case of Dr Phil Boyle, the answer to the first question is ‘no’, and to questions...
A children’s rights referendum is on the cards. Before we vote on it we should carefully consider the example of Britain. Those who favour a change to the Constitution claim that the current law in this country makes it too hard to remove children from their families. The danger is that the change might make...
The topic of disruptive classroom behaviour by pupils raised its head again this year at the annual Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) conference. According to TUI general secretary Peter McMenamin, the recession and educational cutbacks have made the problem worse. “Most social problems manifest themselves initially in the classroom. Teachers have said that the predicament...
Last night (April 9) Prime Time ran an item on how religion is being taught in a new type of State-run, inter-denominational primary school. The report was heavily weighted against the practice of teaching the various faith groups separately during class time. For example, Labour’s Ruairi Quinn, who was critical of the practice, was given...
The Deputy General Secretary of the INTO, Noel Ward, has called for Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act to be consigned to history, because it ‘legislates for discrimination’. At the INTO annual congress yesterday, Mr Ward, INTO deputy general-secretary referring to an article written by a representative of the Iona Institute, asked how a...
