Exit poll data from the recent General Election allow us to see which party has the most religious supporters and which one the least. The short answer is that Aontú has the most religious supporters – measured by regular church attendance – while the Greens and Social Democrats are neck and neck in having the...
The Iona Institute’s new video, ‘The Good the Church Does’, looks at the enormous good the Catholic Church does worldwide, something often forgotten in the midst of all the sometimes justified criticism of the Church. The video can be seen on our Twitter account, on our Facebook page, or here on YouTube. No voluntary organisation...
The Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality met again last weekend. Regrettably, the sessions on “The family in the constitution and law”, amounted to a prolonged attack on the special status of marriage in the Constitution. Prof. Siobhan Mullaly from NUI Galway explained how the special status of marriage appears to impinge on the rights of...
In 2018 more than 720,000 people, representing 33.6% of the electorate on the day, voted to keep the the pro-life Amendment in our Constitution. As a party, it would be the biggest in the Dáil, much bigger than Sinn Féin, which received 24.5% of first preferences. But such a party does not exist because pro-life...
Was the nuclear family more trouble than it was worth? The headline on a piece in the prestigious American monthly, The Atlantic, would give the impression that it was. More surprising is that the headline is over an article written by New York Times columnist, David Brooks who, despite writing for that newspaper, is on...
It is only 13 months since Ireland’s new abortion law was passed, and ever since, activists and other have been seeking to expand the grounds for abortion even further, even though the law is already permissive by the standard of most European countries. A new paper by three academics at University College Cork worries that...
Fr Vincent Twomey, Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, addressed a packed University Church on Wednesday night. The event was co-hosted by The Iona Institute and the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason. In his wide-ranging address, Fr Twomey surveyed the situation of the Church in Ireland, discussing in particular...
Yet another Citizens’ Assembly has been established, this time to discuss the issue of gender equality. It began in Dublin, on Saturday, and will run once a month for six months. But I wonder if the Assembly, which is focussing mainly on female equality, can even tell us what a woman is? For example, does...
In the current election campaign, the Churches have so far been mostly conspicuously silent. In Britain, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales put out a statement ahead of the December election there, as did the Scottish bishops. The Catholic bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, has issued a comment on our election and the need...
A landmark ruling has recognised the right to German pharmacists to refuse to sell the so-called morning after pill (MAP) on grounds of conscience. No such right has ever been recognised in Ireland. The drug is used as a post-coital contraceptive but, when conception occurs, it also prevents implantation in the uterine wall, causing the...
