David Quinn spoke last week in University Church on the topic, ‘Taking Stock: assessing the last two years and the road ahead’. You can now watch the talk by clicking here. In the first part of the talk, David addressed how the pandemic impacted the Churches. He then discussed the review of the operation of Ireland’s...
Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia, a website many ordinary people take to be an authoritative source on basically everything, a sort of internet version of Encyclopedia Britannica. On many issues, it is nothing of the sort, which is why Sanger has lost faith in his creation. He believes it lost its impartiality years...
Violence against Christians in Europe is both unrecognised and underestimated, says a major new report. Secular intolerance and Islamist physical violence are two main threats to religious freedom, but they often downplayed by media. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) looks at five European countries where the rights of Christians...
Last week, the Dáil began debating the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill but, in reality, there was no debate. Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) poses many serious ethical and legal questions but very few objections were raised by our TDs. This is a typical pattern in these debates. The Bill is very permissive and adult-centered in its...
Dr Dermot Kearney is an Irish physician working in England. Through use of the Abortion Reversal Pill (APR) treatment, he has saved at least 20 babies who would otherwise have been lost to abortion. Abortion provider, Marie Stopes International, made a complaint against him to the General Medical Council, but the complaint was recently dismissed....
As a statistician interested in pro-life issues, I was naturally interested in making a Submission to the current abortion review. Having analysed data from the first two years of our new abortion regime, I gathered the findings (plus commentary) into a Word document, and attached this Word document to an email which I then sent...
Why do birth rates keep falling? A common explanation is that the cost of living is the main factor, especially the rising cost of accommodation. But an alternative explanation is that the main reason is changing social attitudes. An important new study provides plenty of evidence that the second explanation is the stronger one. The...
The Minister for Health has invited members of the public and organisations to submit their opinions on how the current abortion law is operating. It is not a review of the law per se but how it is being implemented from day-to-day. Obviously, all pro-life groups would like the law to be reversed completely, but...
A new assisted human reproduction Bill, presented this week by Cabinet, will allow the use of sperm or eggs from a deceased person. The children produced will be deliberate semi-orphans, one of their parents dead before they are even conceived. This is one of several big ethical problems with the legislation. The final text of...
It is now 25 years since the formal introduction of divorce to Ireland. Although we had the referendum in 1995, the law itself was not passed until 1997. The analysis I have read so far of the anniversary has been shallow and self-congratulatory. It is as though there is no downside at all to divorce....
