The campaign to legalise assisted suicide in Ireland is gathering pace. As with the abortion referendum, human stories are being used to win the public around to the proposition. This was very much the case on RTE’s Claire Byrne Live last Monday night. The result is that suicide is being normalised. Vulnerable people are being...
To lots of international publicity, a new assisted suicide machine gained legal approval in Switzerland last week called ‘Sarco’, short for sarcophagus. As the name implies, it is a coffin-shaped and sized container that is flooded with nitrogen when activated from inside by the suicidal person, killing them. The development caused remarkably little outrage because...
The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD, launched the Review of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Act) 2018 yesterday at a Meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health. Sadly, this review is about one thing… the extension of abortion. What became clear from the meeting is that the review will be a...
The number of Irish people with disabilities will decline over time, a new report from by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says. This will be due to the general decline in fertility rates, it states. No doubt that will be a big factor, but it leaves out another key element, namely the growing...
In a short address delivered online to a conference in Italy last weekend, David Quinn, head of the Iona Institute discusses the restrictions placed on public worship during the pandemic. He says that the strictness or otherwise of restrictions was often a sign how well respected or not religion is in society. Ireland had the...
Thanks mainly to Covid-19, Ireland saw a huge drop in the number of births in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year. At 14.6pc, it was the second biggest fall in Europe, and would have been even worse were it not for the number of non-Irish nationals having babies...
By David Mullins This week the Social Democrats brought forward a Private Members Bill entitled the Education (Health, Relationships and Sex Education) Bill 2021. It has religious-ethos based RSE directly in its sights. Parents would no longer be allowed to withdraw their children from RSE class. The stated aim of the Bill, at least according...
Hate crimes against Christians have risen dramatically in recent years, according to a newly published report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OCSE). These include violent attacks on individual Christians, on churches and on holy objects. To mark “International Day for Tolerance”, last Tuesday the OCSE presented its annual report on hate...
This personal reflection was prompted on hearing of a highly principled individual seriously suffering the ill-effects of Covid. Whether you get a vaccine or not is your decision in conscience. If you decide not to do so, then it should be for well-considered reasons. I hope this article can be understood in the honest spirit...
New research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) confirms that when fathers play an active role in the lives of their children, it has beneficial effects on the child. Unfortunately, the research fails to take into consideration the role marriage has in encouraging more father involvement with children. It is a big blind...
