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...
By Jim Stack The good news first. Nearly 20% of Irish women changed their minds about abortion in 2020. That is considerably higher than in 2019. According to HSE figures obtained by Carol Nolan TD, while there were 6,455 abortions in Ireland in the first trimester of pregnancy, 8,057 women had an initial consultation with...
On Wednesday, Ireland’s human rights record will once again be under the scrutiny of a United Nations committee. As discussed in a previous blog, more pressure will be heaped on us to make our abortion law even more permissive. But our education system will come under scrutiny, with objections being raised to our mainly denominational...
I approached the new Netflix horror series, ‘Midnight Mass’, with a certain amount of trepidation. It’s not that I expected it to be particularly gory, more that I thought it would be mediocre, and it was. I also wondered if it would be full of anti-religious and anti-Catholic stereotypes, and it certainly didn’t disappoint on...
Ireland, like almost every country in the world, appears on a regular basis before this or that UN committee to give an account of how well it is meeting its various human rights commitments. Those committees have often exceeded their briefs by demanding Ireland introduce abortion. We have done that now, so the next step...
