The Catholic archdioceses of Dublin and Tuam have said First Holy Communion and Confirmations can go ahead again despite Government guidelines advising against them. The archbishops join at least six other dioceses giving their priests permission to do so.

Tuam archbishop, Michael Neary told priests last week that First Holy Communions and Confirmations may proceed from mid-August. He said: “It’s important that the guidance and protocols be followed, and that priests would encourage parishioners to take every precaution outside of the ceremony itself”.

Archbishop Dermot Farrell said there has been no engagement from the Government with Church representatives regarding revision of public health guidelines.

He said the grounds for the restrictions appear to be that they may lead to family gatherings, which could breach public health guidelines on household mixing.

“This is perplexing, as no such prohibitions are applied to other events, such as sporting of civic events, or other family occasions, such as the celebration of birthdays and anniversaries, or indeed to weddings or funerals.

“Many have concluded that, in the absence of appropriate justification, these guidelines are discriminatory,” Archbishop Farrell writes.

Yesterday afternoon, he commented on the news that former Minister, Katherine Zappone, held an outdoor event for a large crowd of patrons at a swanky hotel: “You know it’s okay to have a bash in the Merrion Hotel with 50 people present. But yet, it’s not possible for a parent to take their child along to receive the sacrament,” he told RTÉ Radio One.

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, has paid tribute to the bravery of the priest killed in the Co Cork bus crash, who he said sacrificed himself to save his secretary.

Locals told media that Fr Con Cronin was having lunch with a woman in Monkstown, and pushed her out of the way of the Bus Éireann bus as it lost control and veered towards them on Tuesday.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1, Archbishop Farrell said it was a “very sad day”.

“Could I sympathise with Fr Con Cronin and his family on the tragic death of Fr Cronin and pay tribute to his bravery, where he sacrificed himself to save his secretary.

“But also just pay tribute to all my priest colleagues on this feast day of St John Vianney, the patron saint of priests.”

More than 75 amicus briefs have been filed at the US Supreme Court supporting the state of Mississippi’s ban on most elective abortions after 15 weeks, the state’s attorney general said last week. Many of the briefs were filed by Catholic or pro-life organizations.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center was one of the amici curiae in the case. Its president, Joseph Meaney, told CNA on Tuesday that the case presents “a remarkable opportunity” for the court to substantially alter or overturn its previous rulings that claimed a right to abortion.

Expressing optimism that the court will reevaluate or possibly overturn its Roe v. Wade decision as a result of the Dobbs case, Meaney said “there’s a real light at the end of the tunnel here.”

“There’s a growing cultural momentum that people have had enough of abortion-on-demand,” Meaney said, adding the Supreme Court overstepped its authority in the Roe case by imposing legal abortion on the nation.

The abortion of babies simply because of their gender should no longer be allowed in Ireland, according to the leader of Aontú.

Peadar Tóibín was responding to a report published in the British Medical Journal that there could be 4.7 million fewer girls born globally in the next ten years because of sex-selective practices.

A preference for boys in many countries and cultures means that girls are far more likely to be aborted.

The authors of the study say it could lead to a “marriage squeeze” in affected countries and elevated levels of anti-social behaviour and violence. This could include an increase in trafficking of girls and child marriages and affect long-term stability of societies.

The Meath West TD tabled an amendment in the Dáil in 2018 to ban gender selection abortion but FF, FG, SF, Labour and PbP voted against it.

He now intends to bring a new Bill in the next Oireachtas term that would again attempt to ban the practice.

In a statement, he said: “We need a society that protects everyone’s life especially those who are the most vulnerable. We need to have compassionate society where human welfare is considered important. We can no longer tolerate a law in this country that blatantly allows for the targeting of baby girls”.

The Government has defended the presidential oath’s mention of God as those taking a court case against it are not victimised by it.

In submissions to the European Court of Human Rights seen by The Irish Times, the Government said the case taken by Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall and four co-litigants should be dismissed because their rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion were not breached.

Directly citing the European Convention on Human Rights, the Government also made the claim that the declarations were “necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.

The American Medical Association Board of Trustees has passed a resolution calling for an end to the designation of sex in all future birth certificates.

The resolution distinguishes between the “Certificate of Live Birth” — which is used for simple data collection and vital statistics — and a “Birth Certificate,” which is proof for the born person that he or she was indeed born.

The AMA wants biological sex recorded for the former as a private matter of record-keeping. But it will now urge that birth-certificate forms carry no designation of sex to prevent future discrimination based on identity and to allow the person to decide later what sex they really are.

The resolution says “Existing AMA policy recognizes that every individual has the right to determine their gender identity and sex designation on government documents. To protect individual privacy and to prevent discrimination, U.S.  jurisdictions should remove sex designation on the birth certificate”.

The AMA is a professional association and lobbying group of doctors and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is the largest such association in the US with over 240,000 members and the only national one. Its mission is to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.

Writing in the Irish Independent, Bishop Kevin Doran said, “The mission of the Church cannot be put on hold indefinitely”.

Dublin parish priest, Fr Joe McDonald, has called on the rest of the country’s Catholic bishops to follow suit.

“We can no longer accept a fob-off from a Government who either don’t respect or don’t understand the problem of deferring liturgical life indefinitely,” he said.

Concerns have been expressed, without any direct evidence, that the nuns will exert an influence on the proposed new maternity hospital in the future.

Pat McCann, who is also the founder of the Dalata hotel group, has arranged to meet James Menton, the chairman of St Vincent’s Hospital Group, this week “to make sure we’re all aligned on what we’re doing”.

McCann has said he will not ask for the site to be sold to the state because it is “irrelevant” who owns it.

The Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, recently said the Sisters should sell the site to the State “at the market value”.

He suggested they use the proceeds of the sale “to support the care of women in crisis pregnancy”.

However, McCann believes that as long as the State owns the hospital building, the ownership of the land is not important. “Where you have a building on a campus like St Vincent’s, it’s very common in Ireland and the UK that there are common services such as egress and car parks. The easiest way to manage that is to have a ground lease,” he said.

“The thing to watch is if there are any restrictive covenants in that lease,” he said. “There is only one: that what goes on the site is the hospital. All [medical] procedures that are legally available in the state will be available there.”

Northern Ireland’s First Minister has said he will block any move by Westminster to force Stormont to commission a radical abortion regime. The law is even more permissive than legislation in the rest of the UK.

Paul Givan said he has sought legal advice on how to “resist” an order by the Secretary of State Brandon Lewis directing that the procedure be made widely available by March. The order forces the implementation of legislation imposed on Northern Ireland by Westminster in 2019.

Mr Givan said he is assessing all his options, politically and legally.

“I spoke to the Secretary of State and I said to him he shouldn’t do this, that it was wrong for him to do it.

“We are taking legal advice now as to the implications of that legal action that he has taken and what our options legally are to resist that.

Mr Givan told BBC Northern Ireland that the order made by Mr Lewis had “profound constitutional ramifications”.

He said Mr Lewis “may have to take me to court” for obstructing the Westminster direction.

At least 3,462 Christians, including ten priests or pastors, were murdered in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021.

The number, just 68 deaths short to the estimated total for the whole of 2020, is aligned with the warnings from human rights organisations that focus on anti-Christian persecution regarding the rise of religious-motivated violence in Nigeria, and a nation where the Christian and Muslim populations are widely considered as more or less evenly split.

According to a recent report coming from Nigeria itself produced by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, the number of unarmed Christians who were murdered by members of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram or other Jihadist groups between Jan. 1 to July 18, 2021, is barely lower to the one estimated by Open Door’s International for 2020.