Every now and then a neuroscientist pops us to tell us religion is all in the mind because he has tracked down the part of the brain that ‘controls’ and accounts for religion. Fire up this part of the brain and next thing you know, you’re getting ‘mystical’ experiences. Turn it off and you’re as...
The Government’s Civil Partnership Bill began the process of going through committee earlier this week. Sadly, no amendments on religious freedom were tabled, much less debated. Instead, we had amendments from both Fine Gael Justice spokesperson Charlie Flanagan and Labour Justice spokesperson Brendan Howlin, asking that Civil Partnership be made even more like marriage. Deputy...
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...
