The Mater hospital is being pressured by the new abortion law into abandoning its pro-life ethos. In his column in last Friday’s Irish Independent, David Quinn argues that this isn’t only a battle about abortion, it’s also a battle about the autonomy of civil society. A constitutional case could be on the cards.
The Mater hospital is required by the newly passed Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act to perform abortions under certain circumstances. This includes the suicide ground. Fr Kevin Doran, a member of the board of the Mater, said the law clashed with the ethos of the hospital. The Iona Institute released a statement today defending...
The issue of our schools featured at this week’s MacGill summer school including in speeches by Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly (pictured) and Labour TD Aodhan O’Riordain. Unlike O’Riordain, O’Reilly has a nuanced line on the Catholic Church, nonetheless she seems to disapprove of the fact that at independence the State ‘outsourced’ the teaching of the nation’s...
David Quinn appeared on the Vincent Browne Show last night to discuss the ‘liberal agenda’. Also on the panel were John McGuirk, Cllr Bríd Smith of People Before Profit and Niamh Hourigan of UCC. The presenter was Tom McGurk. The panel discussed the effects of the liberal agenda on Ireland, both from a social and...
President Higgins’ decision to sign the Government’s abortion legislation, rather than refer it to the Supreme Court, gives rise to mixed feelings. On the one hand, had he decided to refer the Bill, it would have delayed its implementation, and given some hope that it might never...
The other day I blogged about a new website in America that allows those who went through divorce as children, but are now in adulthood, to recount their often very painful and bitter experiences. I then tweeted it. Here is what Labour councillor Niamh McGowan tweeted in reply: “Like parents who make the difficult decision...
A new study, reported in the New York Times, confirms that children who grow up in areas with higher than average levels of marriage and higher than average levels of religious practice are more likely to be upwardly mobile in later life. According to the study, some of the favoured ways of tackling poverty such...
Elizabeth Marquadt is the author of ‘Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce’. Elizabeth herself is a child of divorce and grew up shuttling back and forth between the two houses of her divorced parents. This is the experience of many children of divorce. Now a...
Just when you thought that certain aspects of the culture couldn’t get any more sordid, you read a piece that makes you realise that things are sometimes a lot worse than we think. This New York Times feature explains that not only are US college students not waiting until marriage to have sex, or even...
Lucinda Creighton’s principled stand against her own Government’s abortion Bill was widely seen as an act of rare political courage, even by some who disagreed with her position. Some have suggested that not only was she sacrificing her job as Minister for Europe, but a...
