What makes marriage work? A new study from the University of Exeter has looked at exactly this and recommended the findings be taught in schools. After all, entering a marriage is one of the most important decisions we can make in life, so we ought to do our best to get it right and we...
Twenty five years ago John Paul II released the encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), a monumental document in moral theology. It was a refutation of moral relativism in moral theology. That tendency is still extremely prevalent in theological circles and in society at large and is becoming stronger. Pope Benedict has referred...
By David Mullins The fact that the dog did not bark is of course the famed and curious incident referred to by Sherlock Holmes in the Conan Doyle story, The Adventure of Silver Blaze. The same curiosity might fairly apply to the operation of the National Advisory Committee on Bioethics. Established in March 2012 by then...
The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has recently published a long document (The Code of Ethical Standards for Health Care) that gives directions to Catholic health care institutions such as hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, etc. The Code is particularly important now that Ireland has voted to repeal the 8th amendment. The document covers a variety of...
British abortion provider, BPAS, have just produced a survey of teenagers dealing with the decline in teenage pregnancy rates. It turns out the big factor, despite all the hype, isn’t sex education at all, but social media and the fact that, as a result, teenagers spend a lot more time in the family home rather...
On Saturday night almost 10,000 people turned up at the 3Arena to hear a philosophical discussion between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris. Harris is a sort of American version of Richard Dawkins. The discussion was chaired by Douglas Murray, author of ‘The Strange Death of Europe’. To have that number of people at an event...
In 2013, 2.1 million marriages and 943,000 divorces took place in the European Union. This is the equivalent of 4.1 marriages and 1.9 divorces for every 1,000 persons. How does Ireland compare with the rest of Europe? In the same year, the crude marriage rate (number of marriage per 1,000 persons per annum) for Ireland...
The question of the existence of God is one that is part and parcel of contemporary society’s general interest in religion. All religious traditions consider the issue of some divine being, even those which reject the existence of a divine figure precisely because their religious outlook is formed on the basis of the lack of...
It might seem a silly question to ask those who constantly call for scientific, objective, evidence-based, school-based sex education programmes, but where is the “evidence” that such programmes actually work? By ‘work’ we mean do they reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy and STIs? As the answer is not immediately self-evident, researchers have poured time,...
By David Quinn The Irish people have voted in favour of the right to choose. Under the proposed Irish law, a woman who becomes pregnant will be free to decide whether to proceed with the pregnancy or not, whether to accept the responsibilities of motherhood, or not. But what of the rights and duties of...
