At the time of writing, the Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill 2022 is making its way through the Oireachtas. The chief aim is to control certain types of speech and thought. But free speech cannot be just for the virtuous, the well-intentioned and the polite, and so hate speech laws, however...
The US midterm elections took place on Tuesday. What has attracted little attention on this side of the Atlantic is the fact that voters in three US states backed extreme, pro-choice amendments to their constitutions. Pro-life proposals went before two other states, and they were rejected. Perhaps part of the reason is that the Democrats...
International development NGOs generally originated from the middle of the last century, but public support for faith-based and missionary organisations dates back centuries and they often laid the foundations for the work of secular agencies, something that is often forgotten. The Catholic Church was a pioneer in development infrastructure with 1822 being a significant year....
Upcoming ‘hate crime’ legislation could easily land the Church in trouble, warns a new article in The Catholic Herald. Last week, the Cabinet approved the ‘Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022’, and while it is uncertain exactly what its effects will be, it is not impossible to imagine a...
The well-being of young adults aged 18-25 in America has significantly declined, compared to older age groups, according to new research from the Human Flourishing Programme at Harvard University. This is due to the lockdowns but also to a decline in religious practice. The same phenomenon has occurred in Ireland. The study used data from...
In another sign of the very aggressive posture of the Irish State towards the pro-life movement, the HSE has backed calls for exclusion zones outside health centres in its submission on the matter to the Oireachtas Health Committee. Last August, the Government published a General Scheme of a Bill that would ban pro-life activities, including...
You probably didn’t notice at the time, but a judge in New York opened the door a few weeks ago to legal recognition of so-called ‘polyamorous relationships’, which involve three or more people who are romantically involved with one another. Ruling on a case, Judge Karen May Bacdayan, opined that perhaps the “time had arrived”...
Conservative women are generally happier than their liberal counterparts, according to a new survey, and marriage and family life are strongly linked to the greater life satisfaction of conservatives. The American Family Survey, an annual nationwide study of 3,000 Americans, found that only 15pc of liberal women of the 18-55 age group are “completely satisfied”...
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Belgium has violated the right to life, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, in a controversial euthanasia case, although the ruling was more about procedure than the substance of the country ‘right to die’. The ruling refers to Godelieva de Troyer, a woman...
A moral transformation, rather than social policies, will stop the de-population bomb claims Dr Nicholas Eberstadt, an expert in demography, in a new interview called the ‘De-Population Bomb’. For years we have been warned of the dangers of an increasing world population (the so-called ‘population bomb’), but what happens when it shrinks, instead? This is already...
