The Slovak Parliament has issued a rebuke to its EU counterpart for having attempted to assert a right to abortion.
In April, the EU Parliament passed a resolution calling for abortion to be included in the EU’s charter of fundamental human rights.
However, last week the Slovak Parliament voted 78 to 40 that abortion is a matter of national sovereignty and therefore beyond the competence of the EU.
The motion expressed concern over “repeated efforts” of the European Parliament “to interfere with” the sovereignty of the member states of the European Union, citing abortion as an example and adding that issues “related to health policy fall within the competence of national states”.
Argentina’s bishops have hailed the country’s Supreme Court for protecting the rights of a child in a case involving surrogate motherhood.
The court rejected the request of a male couple who contracted the surrogate to be registered as the sole parents of the child at the expense of the birth mother.
Welcoming the “unprecedented exemplary ruling”, the Bishops’ noted the Court’s decision that “the mother is the one who gives birth, regardless of the subjective self-representations and private wishes of third parties.”
The Bishops’ also welcomed the Court urging the nation’s Legislature to “correct the lack of regulation”, so as to take into account the rights of all involved and to limit harm to “the most vulnerable, that is, poor women and children processed as objects of desire”.
Spain’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the refusal of a Catholic brotherhood to admit a woman amounted to illegal discrimination against her on the basis of her sex and her right to association.
In 2008, María Teresita Laborda Sanz requested to join a public association of the faithful founded in 1545 specifically for men.
In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that Laborda had not suffered any discrimination because “the purposes of [the brotherhood] being religious, it did not hold a dominant position in the economic, professional, or labour spheres, so no harm could be caused to the appellant, who could create a new religious association with the same purposes.”
However, rejecting this interpretation, the Constitutional Court has now said that while the association may be religious in nature, the prohibition of women “is not based on any reason of a religious or moral nature”.
Voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota on Tuesday night voted down major pro-abortion proposals in their states, while seven other states saw voters approve measures to expand abortion, in several cases codifying abortion access into the state constitution.
After back-to-back pro-life losses in half a dozen states since 2022, the rejection of the pro-abortion measures in three states on Tuesday represent the first victories at the ballot box for pro-life advocates since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Most notably, Florida voters failed to cross the super-majority threshold to adopt Amendment 4, which would have added a right to abortion before the point of “viability” to the state’s constitution and allowed for abortions later in pregnancy if deemed “necessary” for reasons of “health”.
The measure would have overturned the state’s Heartbeat Protection Act, one of the most pro-life laws in the country, which restricts abortion after six weeks of pregnancy with limited exceptions.
The measure failed after garnering 57pc of the vote; three short of the 60pc it needed to pass.
It was strongly opposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Catholic Church in Florida.
A French radical feminist has offered an apology to Catholics for provocative protests after undergoing a change of heart.
In February 2013, Marguerite Stern burst, topless, into the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to celebrate, along with other feminist activists, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and express her hatred of the Church.
In a video published on YouTube on Oct. 31, the eve of All Saints’ Day, she offered her “sincere apologies” to Catholics hurt by her frequent public provocations when she was a Femen activist between 2012 and 2015, most notably, “during a campaign in favour of gay marriage.”
Stern’s change of heart began five years ago, when she turned against transgender ideology.
Unmarried people are much more likely to be depressed than those who are married, major new research suggests.
The risk of depression for unmarried people could be higher in men and those who had more education, the study also found.
The scientists suggest the more cheerful disposition of married couples could be because they are able to socially support one another, have better access to economic resources and have a positive influence on each other’s well-being.
The analysis looked at data from more than 100,000 people across seven countries, including Ireland and the UK.
They found that being unmarried was associated with a 79pc higher risk of depressive symptoms compared to those who are married.
People who were divorced or separated had a 99pc higher risk of showing signs of depression, and people who were widowed had a 64pc higher risk than people who were married.
Kemi Badenoch, MP, the new leader of the Conservative Party, is agnostic but pro-Christian.
Born in Wimbledon to Nigerian parents, she identifies as agnostic, but describes herself as a “cultural Christian”—someone who aligns with Christian values without a personal faith. Her family background, which she describes as “sort of Anglican and Methodist,” instilled these values.
Married to a Catholic, she is raising her two children in the Catholic Church and jokingly calls herself an “honorary Catholic.”
Badenoch’s stance on religious freedom came into the spotlight recently when she defended Scottish politician Kate Forbes’ right to express Christian views on social issues. While Badenoch supports same-sex marriage, she opposed efforts to marginalise Forbes over her religious beliefs.
She argued strongly for free expression, adding: “I’m not religious at all, but I understand it. I grew up in a very religious country, so I understand what it means to people and how they live their lives. Stopping people from saying what they really feel is overly draconian.”
The decline of Christianity in Ireland is leaving a dangerous vacuum that is being filled with “pagan spiritualty, religion and worship”, the Fr Billy Swan, the Administrator of Wexford parish has warned.
Pope Francis recently said the Church must confront forms of paganism in secular culture, describing the air we breath as “a gaseous pagan god”, while in Ireland, a recent report from the Iona Institute shows people are increasingly ditching traditional church weddings for ‘New Age’ style ceremonies.
Writing in the Irish Catholic, Fr Billy Swan said that “there is evidence that Ireland is ‘re-paganising’ or reverting to the worship of false gods like it did before we accepted the Christian faith back in the 5th Century”.
Echoing his warning, Prof. Patricia Casey, cited the risks of people “dabbling in the occult”.
“The occult is very dangerous because it takes people into all kinds of things like devil worship, witchcraft, pornography – people actually working in tandem with the devil. It leads people into very dark things and into a very dark perspective on life that worships evil, because that’s what devil worship is about, it’s worshipping evil and that’s obviously very concerning.”
A change in law could spur a change in culture to induce people, especially the vulnerable and defenceless, to accept assisted suicide if Ireland were to legalise the practice.
That’s according to Bishop of Kilmore, Martin Hayes.
He was speaking after the Dáil voted to ‘note’ an Oireachtas committee’s report calling for an assisted suicide regime to be introduced.
“If assisted dying is legalised then the elderly, the sick and people with disabilities are vulnerable to cultural coercion, i.e., to messages of ‘you’re no longer useful or wanted, ….you are a burden on society’”, Bishop Hayes told the Irish Catholic.
He added that the Report “fails to provide adequate safeguards for the vulnerable, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities. It could enable funding being prioritised for assisted dying above that for palliative care thus leading to a devaluation of palliative care”.
Independent Senator Ronan Mullen has said last week’s passing of the Hate Crime Bill in the Oireachtas places “radical gender politics” firmly into Statute Law.
While 2015 legislation allowed people to change their legal sex upon request, to either ‘male’ or ‘female’, the latest Act recognises other ‘genders’.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Senator Mullen said that the new law doesn’t confine itself to male or female but instead ‘transgender’ or any form of gender expression including a gender that’s neither male nor female, what you have is radical gender politics coming in for the first time into our statute law.”
He added: “My concern is by introducing this new definition of gender that it would be the Government’s intention and NGOs who are very well-connected politically, to push to have that new definition of gender, which is coming from a very ideological place, to replace the time-honoured definition of gender in other areas of our law in the future,” he said. “Even if it’s just in connection with hate crimes, it sets a bad precedent for the future.”
