Primary schools pupils will spend less time learning religion and be subject to a revised curriculum under the biggest changes to the subject in more than 20 years.

Instead, there will be more time devoted to the core curriculum with a new focus on foreign languages and ‘wellbeing’.

The measures are contained in a new framework for the primary curriculum that was recently signed off by the State’s advisory body on the curriculum, The Irish Times has reported.

The 40-page blueprint, likely to be published by Minister for Education Norma Foley early in 2023, sets out the planned structure and content of the next curriculum for primary schools.

The report advises that the length of time spent teaching religion be cut by half an hour a week, from two-and-a-half hours a week to two hours.

In addition, religion would be supported by a new curriculum on “religion, ethical and multi-belief education”, to give pupils a wider perspective on beliefs.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2022/12/28/religion-teaching-time-to-be-cut-in-new-primary-curriculum/

Gardai in North Kerry are investigating an act of vandalism at a church in Ballyduff in which the altar cloth was set alight.

Sources told The Kerryman they are now following a definite line into the incident in which three young women entered the Sts Peter and Paul Parish Church in the village before setting fire to the altar.

The incident happened on Friday evening when the church was still open to the public. It was believed to have been unoccupied when the trio entered, making their way to the altar before setting fire to the cloth covering it.

Detectives are baffled by the motive behind the incident, with the investigation currently treating it as an intentional act.

Luckily, the altar cloth failed to go up in flames with the initial blaze sputtering out soon afterwards – also scorching part of the carpet beneath.

A major land-purchase programme, targeting church-owned and other institutional sites, is to be initiated by Dublin City Council within the next six months, council chief executive Owen Keegan has said.

Under the land-purchase programme, the council would focus on acquiring well-located sites, which were not currently zoned for housing to avoid paying a premium for residentially zoned lands. City councillors would then be asked to rezone the lands.

Last year the archdiocese of Dublin sought the rezoning of more than 30 churches in the city and their surrounding lands for housing.

However, Mr Keegan opposed the rezonings.

In a strongly worded statement at the time, the archdiocese said Mr Keegan’s recommendation was “short-sighted and unnecessarily restricts the diocese’s efforts to assist in meeting the city’s housing needs”.

Mr Keegan now says the council would be interested in acquiring some of these sites.

The concerns are contained in records of meetings with Department of Education officials.

The Bishops “made it clear to the department that they are concerned about their ability to cater for the many parents who wish to continue to enrol their children in schools of Catholic ethos and the ability of those schools to be true to that ethos and their characteristic spirit”.

“We understand that this concern exists in relation to existing schools which, in accordance with the provisions of the Education (Admissions to Schools) Act 2018, cannot prioritise applicant children on the grounds of religion, and that where a school is oversubscribed, this can result in some Catholic children not getting a place in school while children who are not Catholic do get a place.

“We understand also that there is concern that such a situation could arise more frequently should the availability of places in schools of Catholic ethos in a given area decrease on foot of a reconfiguration of a school from Catholic to multi-denominational.

“While there are other challenges concerning curricular development, the admissions issue is a key issue for the IEC [Irish Episcopal Commission],” the record adds.

Primary school children should be educated about what it means to be transgender, Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman has said. This means teaching children that a person’s biological sex and ‘gender’ might be completely different.

The Green Party minister told the Irish Independent that primary school children should have an “understanding” of ‘diversity’.

Asked if school children should be taught more about what it means to be transgender, the minister said “absolutely”, adding it was important to refine the school curriculum to ensure pupils “are getting an understanding of diversity”.

When asked if this applied not only to secondary schools pupils but also to those at primary level, he said: “I think it’s important that primary school children as well have an understanding of the diversity of our society.”

His department, with the Department of Social Protection, is working on policies on whether children under the age of 16 should be able to declare their gender identity.

A charity volunteer has been charged with “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” after she was arrested in an abortion buffer zone while praying silently.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 45, was standing still and silently when police approached her. When asked what she was doing, she clarified that she was not protesting, but “might be” praying inside her mind.

She was searched, arrested, interrogated, and charged on four counts for breaking the so-called “buffer zone” around a Birmingham abortion facility. Based on the charges, the act of standing silently was deemed “intimidating” behaviour, even though the abortion facility was closed and there was no discernible subject of this intimidation, and despite her clear admission that she was not there to protest, according to a law firm representing her.

Vaughan-Spruce will face court on 2nd February. ADF UK are supporting her defense.

“Nobody should be arrested because of their silent thoughts. Isabel has been clear that all she had done in the PSPO zone since it was instituted in November was to pray, silently, in the privacy of her own mind. Had police not asked her what she was doing, and had she not let them know that she “might” be praying in her mind, there are no grounds under which she would have been charged for breaking the PSPO,” explained Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, supporting Isabel Vaughan-Spruce.

Christmas this year marks the first time in its history that the European Parliament set up a Nativity scene at its headquarters in Brussels. Until now, officials of the European institution had considered it “potentially offensive.” The move was hailed by the EPP, the largest political grouping in the Pariament.

Isabel Benjumea, an MEP from Spain, was instrumental in the decision. First elected in 2019, she tried that year to prepare the groundwork for a gift of a Nativity scene to the parliament. However, she ran into bureaucracy and deadlines.

The following year she was told by the office of the President of Parliament that a crib could not be installed because it was “potentially offensive” to nonbelievers.

Nevertheless, she persisted as “it seemed unacceptable to me to ignore the Christian roots of Europe,” the parliamentarian told Spanish newspaper ABC.

Finally, this year the effort had the support of the Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, although the Nativity scene has only been “authorized as a special exhibition,” which may or may not be renewed in the future.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized the EU for excluding any mention of God or the continent’s Christian roots in the institution’s declarations on the 50th anniversary of its founding.

Jailed secondary school teacher Enoch Burke walked free from Mountjoy Prison last night after his release was ordered by the High Court. Burke refused to use the new gender pronouns of a pupil at his school and a dispute arose between him and the principal leading to him being barred from the premises. He refused to obey this and was held in contempt of court.

Mr Justice Brian O’Moore issued the ruling after a hearing earlier yesterday.

Mr Burke was not present at the court as he had told the judge he could not participate in the process as to do so would be to agree that he was lawfully incarcerated.

Mr Burke said what he wanted from the court was not temporary release, but a just upholding of his constitutional rights.

At the hearing, Mr Justice O’Moore said it was “intolerable” that taxpayers were paying Mr Burke’s salary, as well as the costs of his incarceration in Mountjoy Prison, and it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Burke was exploiting his imprisonment for his own ends.

He said the only plausible interpretation of Mr Burke’s actions was that he saw some advantage in his continuing imprisonment.

The judge said the court would not enable someone found in contempt of court to garner some advantage from that defiance.

He said because of this Mr Burke’s release should be open-ended and not just for Christmas, but he would be sanctioned again by the court if he once more breached High Court orders.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) is urging mothers-to-be to get tested for syphilis to reverse the recent trend of babies being born with the disease.

The DOH says congenital syphilis occurs when a pregnant person with syphilis passes the infection on to the baby during pregnancy. It can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births, low birth weight, or death shortly after birth.

According to the DOH, so far in 2022, there have been 12 confirmed cases of births with congenital syphilis in Pennsylvania, excluding Philadelphia, along with two stillbirths, making it the highest number of cases since 1990.

The number of congenital syphilis cases across the U.S. has risen steadily over the last eight years, growing from 334 in 2012 to 2,184 in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There is a “grossly anti-family tax system” in Britain that is in need of reform.

That’s according to Frank Young, the editorial director at the Civitas think tank

“The UK tax system unfairly judges parents – mostly mothers – who want to stay at home and look after children rather than spend their life as a workhorse in an office. Eight in ten mothers of children below school age want the tax system to help them spend more time with their children, rather than being pushed into work,” he wrote.

Yet, only about one in seven mothers with children under ten is not in work so as to care for their child full-time.

“We’re constantly told not to ‘judge’ different family types, but the state is not neutral, with single-earner couples heavily penalised for taking time away from the workforce to look after children. The UK tax system is based on individuals, rather than households or families. This puts single-earner couples, where one partner works and another takes on caring responsibilities, at a significant disadvantage”.

He suggested looking at Germany for a solution: “There, families benefit from ‘income splitting’, where ‘the tax of a married couple is determined by taxing half of their combined incomes and then doubling the amount to result in the total tax payable’”.