A coffin-shaped capsule that allows occupants to kill themselves has passed legal review in Switzerland, according to its creators.
The creator is Philip Nitschke of Exit International which believes that anyone who makes a ‘rational’ choice to die, ought to be able to avail of assisted suicide, whether they are ill or not.
The Sarco machine can be operated from the inside –conceivably just by blinking if the person suffers from locked-in syndrome – and works by reducing the oxygen level in the pod to below a critical level.
Some 1,300 people died by assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2020 using the services of the country’s two largest assisted suicide organisations.
Pope Francis pushed back against the European Commission’s internal guidelines, which have drawn fire for trying to “cancel Christmas,” likening these efforts to dictatorships as he warned against “ideological colonisation.”
Internal communications of the European Commission were leaked last week whereby a 30-page document, titled “Union of Equality,” advised members of the Commission avoid using the word “Christmas” in favour of “holidays.”
The document is “anachronistic,” Pope Francis said yesterday during a press conference aboard the papal flight returning from his four-day apostolic visit to Cyprus and Greece. “Throughout history many, many dictatorships tried to do it,” he added.
“Think of Napoleon: from there… Think of the Nazi dictatorship, the communist one… it is a fashion of a watered-down secularism, distilled water… But this is something that throughout [history] hasn’t worked”.
Francis also said the European Union must take on the ideals of its founding fathers and be careful of not “paving the road for ideological colonisation”.
The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has apologised after referring to mothers as “postnatal people” in a set of recently-released ‘safer sleeping’ guidelines.
The guidance, published on Wednesday of last week, made no reference to women, instead referring to mothers as “postnatal people”.
RCM removed the guidance from its website on Thursday morning after it had received backlash on social media soon after it was published.
The apology tweeted by RCM read: “We would like to apologise that women are not mentioned in our recent safer sleeping guidance. This was a huge oversight on our part, especially as we are committed as an organisation to ensure that women are never erased from the narrative around pregnancy and birth.
“We have taken it down from our website while we revise and correct this omission.”
It’s not the first time a medical organisation has changed its terminology around biological sex. In September, the Lancet medical journal was accused of sexism after describing women as “bodies with vaginas” on its cover.
The export manager of a factory in Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province was killed by a mob on 3 December after he was accused of desecrating posters bearing the name of the prophet Muhammad.
Pakistani news outlet Dawn reports that Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national identified in initial reports by CSW sources as a Hindu, was attacked by “hundreds of men and young boys” on the Wazirabad Road in Sialkot, who tortured the man to death before proceeding to burn his body.
According to a tweet from researcher and journalist Rabia Mehmood, Mr Diyawadana was reportedly killed after his colleagues at the Rajco Industry factory where he worked witnessed him tear off a piece of a poster which read “Labbaik Ya Hussain” (an expression meaning “I am here, O Hussain!” and commonly associated with Shi’a Islam).
The state is set to roll out a free nationwide STI home testing service in 2022 at a cost of €3 million a year.
In the period up to the end of 2019, before Covid-related lockdowns began, there were major increases in the number of STIs in Ireland.
The kits will test for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and HIV. The scheme will be run with the help of SH:24, a free online sexual health service.
The programme will be based on a pilot scheme from earlier this year, which involved 13,749 kits being posted to people’s homes over a five-month period at a cost of €734,000.
As part of the programme, anyone aged 17 and older will be able to order a free STI test to their home. There will be a set number of kits available to order per day. Results will be communicated through the SH:24 clinical team by phone or text message. If follow-up testing or treatment is required, this will be provided for nothing by HSE public STI clinics. The service is aimed at individuals who do not have symptoms of an STI.
The initial pilot scheme had to be halted for a period after almost 5,000 orders were received in less than a day. A spokeswoman for SH:24 called the uptake in Ireland “unprecedented”.
Cohabiting partners should not have the same rights as married couples, according to a leading family campaigner.
Harry Benson of the UK’s Marriage Foundation was giving evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee in Westminster last week.
He noted the problems that arise from cohabiting partners not having the same sorts of rights and protections as equivalent married couples following either break-up or death, and acknowledged the tremendous injustices where, for example, a woman sacrifices her career to bring up children only to be left penniless when her partner walks out with all the money that he says is his.
While sympathising greatly with those situations, Benson told the committee that automatically providing marriage-like rights to cohabiting couples, risks undermining commitment and creating ever more family breakdown that affects couples and children, precisely the problem he says everyone is trying to avoid.
An Evangelical Lutheran Bishop in Finland, is facing trial in January for expressing traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality.
In April, Finland’s Prosecutor General charged Rev Dr Juhana Pohjola and the Christian Democrat MP Dr Päivi Räsänen with “incitement against a group of people” over the 2004 publication of a booklet which described sex outside of heterosexual marriage, including homosexual practice, as sinful.
In an interview with Christian Today, Dr Pohjola affirmed he is ready to go to prison rather than refrain from proclaiming his faith: “We have nothing to be afraid of when we fear God more than men. In truth and in love we are called to confess Christ Jesus and publicly teach the faith of the Church.
“We have to be ready to pay whatever the price is and be labelled by media as intolerant and lawless. We must defend our basic rights and use the freedom of expression we still have.
Although we feel the cultural pressure and intimidation, our main focus as Christians is not to wage cultural war but to share the grace, life and hope we have in Christ Jesus.”
Commissioned by the Iona Institute, and carried out by Amárach Research, the survey found that a slim majority (53%) of pre-coronavirus Mass-goers have not come back yet, while 47% say they are now back regularly attending Mass.
Parishioners cite a number of reasons for not yet returning including ongoing concerns about Covid-19, a dislike of wearing masks and a weakening of faith.
Of those who attended pre-pandemic, but no longer do now, 31% of them said they will return to Mass when all pandemic restrictions are lifted. However, 23% (almost one in four) said that they had no intention of returning to Mass while 46% of former regulars said they did not know whether or not they would ever return to Mass.
If the figure for those who are adamant that they will not return comes to pass, it would represent an overall fall in regular Mass attendance of 12% in just two years.
All Catholics should advocate for the availability of ethically developed vaccines, according to the Catholic Bishops of Ireland.
They gathered remotely this week for their Winter 2021 General Meeting via video-link, instead of the usual location at Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
In a statement released after the meeting, they urged everyone to continue to support the Covid19 vaccination programmes.
However, they also called for pressure to be applied that vaccines be developed in an ethical way.
“In that way they bear witness that biomedical research should always be conducted in a manner which is consistent with respect for life and for human dignity. We ask that the Departments of Health, North and South, would actively promote the development, sourcing, and supply of vaccines which do not have a historical link with abortion”.
They added: “Anyone who, for reasons of conscience, chooses not to be vaccinated must, nevertheless, do their utmost to avoid, by other means and by appropriate behaviour, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infection”.
There is no evidence of a largescale desire by parents for the ethos of schools to change, even as it impacts the teaching of sex education.
In a reply to a parliamentary question from TD, Carol Nolan, the Minister for Education said that his Department had received only 60 communications in ten years, featuring complaints involving a perceived restriction on the teaching of Relationships and Sexuality Education [RSE] as a result of the ethos (or characteristic spirit) of schools.
The Laois-Offaly TD had asked Minister Norma Foley the details of the number of complaints made to her Department from 2011 to date involving the issue of school ethos, including the way in which it had shaped the teaching of RSE.
