Businessman Declan Ganley has called on the Irish Bishops to “open their churches” in defiance of lockdown after his constitutional case against the State in relation to the right to worship was delayed yet again.
His legal challenge to the ban on public worship was originally taken in November of last year. Over the last seven months, it has been repeatedly put back by the Courts, and has yet to receive a full hearing of the evidence. At a preliminary hearing this morning, the case was again put back for mention until May 18th.
Though not directly referencing the delay, Ganley took to twitter to express his frustration, seeming to imply that legal methods of resisting the ban were not bearing fruit. “This will not be resolved through the courts in a reasonable timeframe”.
Instead, he said the Irish Catholic Bishops should “order their parishes to reopen from this Saturday forward for the holding of Covid mitigated public worship, with priests & stewards as well as the congregants all aware we face possible arrest & prosecution”.
The Citizens’ Assembly has voted for radical change to the Constitution’s special protection for marriage.
99% of the members voted to affirm the proposition that the Constitution “protect private and family life, including forms of family life beyond the marital family”.
It was not specified how that would be done. Marriage currently enjoys special status compared with other families in recognition of its importance to children, but critics says it discriminates against other families even after the passage of same-sex marriage in 2015.
Currently, a whole section of Article 41 is dedicated to recognising and protecting the family without specifying any limits to how the institution is understood.
A separate section of the same article recognises and protects marriage, noting it as the institution “on which the Family is founded”.
The Assembly also voted to delete the clause that protects mothers from being forced to work outside the home.
It was proposed that it be replaced with a clause that would be genderless, and, instead of recognising the work of a mother in the upbringing of children, would be more general in recognising the work of carers, and not just in the home, but in the community also.
A Dublin congregation gave public worship to God in the Phoenix Park last Sunday despite the threat of criminal sanctions.
About 100 members of All-Nations Church gathered in the open air, and socially distanced, around the papal cross.
Gardai were present nearby but did not intervene.
The church’s pastor, John Ahern, told the congregation that that they were there to give worship to God, not to protest and that worship was a human right.
He questioned why their gathering should be criminalised while other people freely shopped.
He also said that Christianity is a face to face religion and he had not seen many of his congregation face to face for over a year.
The Taoiseach’s announcement of a possible easing of the blanket ban on public worship in May, subject to public health advice, means that the practice of the Christian religion remains effectively criminalised, according to the Pastor of Howth & Malahide Presbyterian Church.
Reaction elsewhere was more positive with the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh telling EWTN News in the US that the Taoiseach’s announcement came as “great news”.
The announcement followed numerous pleas from church leaders. In February, the Catholic Bishops had asked the Government to ease the ban on worship in time for Easter.
A week ago, Archbishop Martin told the Times Ireland he considered the latest change in covid law–a statutory instrument that confirmed public mass was a criminal offence—to be “formally enacting a potential infringement of religious freedom and of constitutional rights”, and he called for it to be suspended.
The following day, in a meeting with Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, he asked that the pastoral work of priests and other ministers be deemed “essential”.
Last week two different groupings of Evangelical churches asked for the prohibition to be ended.
The Taoiseach rebuffed these requests and instead re-iterated what he had already announced on March 30th—that an easing of restrictions would be considered in May.
In response, the Pastor of Howth & Malahide Presbyterian Church told Spirit Radio he didn’t know what comfort is meant to be derived from the Taoiseach’s announcement, “other than, I think a few more people are able to attend a funeral, from Monday. And they’re going to ‘consider’ reopening places of worship, because apparently they understand how important gathered worship is to people”.
Rev. Alastair Dunlop added: “But, the fact is this [past] Sunday in Dublin is week 44 of the church being effectively banned from practicing the Christian religion, and if we were to gather, safely, to do what we demonstrated over 14 weeks [last summer] that we can do safely, it would be a criminal offence, and that has not changed.”
The Taoiseach was wrong to say a recent change to covid laws did not target religious events, according to a professor of constitutional law at Trinity College Dublin.
Micheal Martin told the Dail Thursday that the latest criminal sanctions, introduced last week, for breaking covid restrictions covered all indoor events.
Oran Doyle however said the only gatherings affected by it are religious, and it catches both indoor and outdoor faith-events, even socially distanced hearing of confession.
He added that the convoluted wording of the ministerial order appeared to be an attempt to deliberately conceal its true purpose, which was to criminalise all religious events.
“But obfuscation a damning indictment of Gov’s respect for citizens’ autonomy. Suggests preference for vaguely articulating standards, then tricking citizens into compliance through calculated ambiguity about the dividing line between legal obligations and public health advice,” he added.
Gender neutral toilets in schools could lead to girls avoiding the restrooms or taking days off, according to a women’s group.
Laoise Uí Aodha de Brún of the grassroots human rights and advocacy group, ‘The Countess Didn’t Fight For This’ was reacting to Department of Education guidelines for new schools and retrofitting of older schools to install mixed sex toilets in secondary schools.
She told Liveline Thursday that gender neutral toilets could lead to girls not going to school due to “period shaming” or getting a UTI from holding their pee.
“Even in a single sex school I would be very nervous as a teenage girl having my period. This is not a progressive move on the Department of Education”.
“I believe it would impact on the privacy, the dignity and the safety of school children.”
Presenter Joe Duffy was forced to apologise to her on air after another contributor launched a string of insults and slurs at her.
Meanwhile, a radical feminist group has accused the Department of depriving school girls of a “sex-based right”.
Radicailín issued a statement saying: “The reason we have single sex spaces is to protect the privacy and safety of women and girls. The new School Design Guide proposals will deprive Ireland’s school girls of this sex-based right.”
A number of prominent Catholic voices have rejected a claim by President Michael D. Higgins that denominational education abandons children “to parcels of hate and memory”.
Mr Higgins’ claim that schools in the region are segregated has also been rebuked as an attempt to offer a “superficial analysis” on the debate on education.
Speaking on The Late Late Show on Friday, President Higgins said that faith-based schools in the North can no longer be justified.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Baroness Nuala O’Loan said she didn’t accept the president’s analysis. “I don’t know of any Catholic – or indeed any Protestant – who has ever told me that they were taught to hate the other people – the other side if you like – in school,” she said.
She described it as a “surprisingly political statement for a president to make”.
She said the comments were not respectful “of the rights of the people of Northern Ireland to make their own decisions about the type of education they wish to provide for the children of Northern Ireland”.
The Minister for Education is appealing a ruling in favour of the constitutional rights of home-schooled students who were excluded from the Leaving Cert calculated grades process.
A panel of three Supreme Court judges will decide later whether the grounds of appeal merit being hear by the Court.
The case concerns a Court of Appeal (COA) judgment last month dismissing the Minister’s appeals over High Court findings in separate cases by two students.
The COA found it was “unreasonable and disproportionate”, and an unlawful breach of the students’ constitutional rights to exclude them entirely from the calculated grades scheme.
The Minister, however, has argued the COA had identified a “new constitutional right” of a home-schooled child to have reasonable account taken of their situation when education policies are being formulated and implemented and not to be excluded from the Leaving Cert.
This is the first time such rights and duties have been identified, and no such right is specified in the Article 42.2 which merely references parents’ rights, the Minister contends.
Persecution of faith groups has drastically increased in more than 95 percent of the world’s worst-offending countries, according to the latest Religious Freedom in the World report.
The report, by international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, shows how the latest technologies are being used to crush religious freedom.
Over the past two years, oppression against vulnerable faith communities has increased in all but one of the 26 countries listed in the survey’s worst or “red” category.
The report, which covers all 196 countries worldwide, traces the rise of transnational Islamist networks, including an online “cyber-caliphate” which is expanding globally is now a tool of online recruitment and radicalisation.
It goes on to describe how Islamist terrorists employ sophisticated digital technologies to recruit, radicalise and attack.
The report also describes how digital technology, cyber networks, surveillance including artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology has increased persecution.
The Chinese Communist Party is keeping religious groups in line with the help of 626 million AI-enhanced surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners.
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland have upheld a complaint against RTE and ruled that its New Year’s Eve show “effectively accused God of sexual violence and sexual crimes”, according to Gript.ie.
The Times, Ireland, reported that the ruling was considered a “serious rebuke” of RTE.
The BAI has directed RTE to broadcast its decision to viewers and that is expected to be aired on Saturday before the 9 o’clock news.
The BAI’s Compliance Committee maintained that the Waterford Whispers sketch, in which God was accused of having raped a Middle Eastern woman, did not comply with the provisions of Principle 5 of the Code of Programme Standards that allow for “critical scrutiny of religion, while also requiring broadcasters to show due respect for religious views, images, practices and beliefs in programme content.”
Mr. Ciarán Ó’Comain brought the complaint to the BAI saying the sketch was “highly offensive” and “predictably so.”
He also said that RTÉ’s apology following the broadcast was “ham-fisted and very qualified”, leaving the sketch on it’s “Player” and only removing it after receiving “thousands of complaints.”
