Religious education teachers have expressed concern that children who are practising Catholics are singled out for bullying more than non-religious students, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
Citing upcoming research from DCU’s Anti-Bullying Centre, Prof James O’Higgins Norman said such pupils were often seen as “old fashioned or out of the mainstream culture” due to a decline in the number of children who practice religion.
“In addressing that we need to promote understanding of difference, that difference is the norm and a good thing, and no two kids are the same,” he said.
A Planned Parenthood-funded list in Argentina of supposed members of the “alt right” – including the country’s Catholic bishops – is being decried as harking back to the days of the country’s ‘Dirty War’ when it was under military rule.
A group of self-described progressive journalists created a website called Reacción Conservadora [Conservative Reaction], in which they have names, pictures and personal information of people and institutions that they claim are ‘conspiring’ to prevent the broadening of abortion rights.
The list includes Argentina’s Catholic bishops, politicians, journalists, academics, medical doctors and even the daughter of a candidate for sainthood.
The website included an interactive map with logos of organizations and faces of individuals. When a person clicked on the images, it would open a file with personal information about them.
The list reminded its targets of similar blacklists employed by the military during the 1974-1983 Dirty war, when the regime “disappeared” thousands of political opponents.
A Co Wicklow Catholic primary school has said it will not be using Flourish, a relationships and sexuality education (RSE) supplementary resource developed by the Irish Bishops’ Conference for use from junior infants up to sixth class.
The 22 parents said they did not want the program to be used even as a “supplementary” resource to complement the existing curriculum.
Their preference was that it not be used “in any shape or format”.
In a May 27th response, Lacken principal Fiona Jones and the school board of management assured the parents that “we intend to continue with our present RSE programme going forward. This rules out the use of any other programme, supplementary or otherwise.”
A British bioethicist is warning that extending a 14-day limit on experimenting on human embryos will “strip away one of the few remaining limits to injustices committed against embryonic human beings.”
For 40 years, the International Society for Stem Cell Research banned experimenting on human embryos that are more than 14 days old. On May 26, it lifted the prohibition and called for greater discussion on the issue.
David Albert Jones, the head of the Oxford-based Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said the decision was the latest in a series of changes that amounted to a “shifting goalpost” on human embryonic research.
“When the UK legalised experimentation on human embryos in 1990, it was promised that this would be subject to various ‘safeguards’: 1) No human embryo would be created by cloning; 2) No human embryo would be genetically modified; 3) No part-human, part-nonhuman embryo could be created; 4) The use of human embryos in assisted reproduction and in research would be regulated with the utmost care; 5) And, most famously, no experimentation on human embryos would be permitted after 14 days,” he said in a statement.
The view that men cannot transition to become women is a “protected belief” under equality law, a UK tribunal ruled yesterday.
An appeal panel led by a High Court judge found that a tax consultant was legally entitled to post social media comments arguing that gender identification was not the same as biological sex.
Maya Forstater was dismissed from the London office of the Centre for Global Development, a think tank, two years ago after she was said to have made “offensive and exclusionary” comments on Twitter.
She argued at an employment tribunal in 2019 that comments such as “woman means adult human female” or “trans women are male” were statements of neutral fact and were not transphobic or expressions of antipathy towards trans people.
But the tribunal rejected her claim and ruled that the decision to dismiss her was lawful.
However, on Thursday morning an employment appeal tribunal overturned that ruling, saying the original judge had “erred in law”.
The ruling of the three-strong panel, led by Mr Justice Choudhury supported Forstater’s argument that her comments were protected as a “philosophical belief” within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010.
A Pakistani court has ordered the release of a Christian couple who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy.
Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar were jailed in 2013 for allegedly sending a text message insulting the prophet Muhammad – even though both are illiterate.
In April, the European parliament cited their case when it passed a motion condemning Pakistan for failing to protect religious minorities.
Last week, however, the Lahore Supreme Court acquitted the married couple on appeal.
Their lawyer, Saif ul-Malook, welcomed the ruling and said his clients are among the most helpless people in Pakistani society.
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, where anyone deemed to have insulted Islam can face the death penalty and the whiff of even unproven allegations can lead to mob lynchings and vigilante murders.
Rights campaigners say accusations are often made to settle personal disputes.
Amnesty International welcomed the decision saying the couple should neither have been convicted nor faced a death sentence in the first place.
“‘Blasphemy’ cases are often premised on flimsy evidence in environments that make fair trials impossible, underscoring the significance of this verdict. The authorities must now immediately provide Shafqat, Shagufta, their family and their lawyer Saiful ul-Malook with adequate security,” said a spokesperson.
There were 209,917 abortions in England and Wales last year, the highest number since the Abortion Act was introduced in 1968, according to statistics released by the Department of Health and Social Care today. This was despite an extended lockdown caused by Covid-19.
The abortion rate in 2020 was highest for women aged 21.
The official statistics reveal that the number of Irish women travelling to England for abortions declined from 375 in 2019 to 194 in 2020.
In addition, there were 693 abortions where a baby was recorded as having Down Syndrome, an increase of 6% from 2019, although this may be an underestimate.
Under the current law, abortion is allowed up to birth if a baby has a disability.
The campaigning group Don’t Screen Us Out said the actual numbers are probably higher than reported due to under-reporting on disability abortion statistics. A 2013 review showed 886 abortions for Down Syndrome in England and Wales in 2010 but only 482 were reported in official Government figures. The underreporting was confirmed by a 2014 Department of Health and Social Care review.
The group says the private availability of early cfDNA testing (otherwise known as NIPT) is likely already leading to an increase in the numbers of children with Down Syndrome being screened out by abortion.
Archbishop Dermot Farrell will run a Summer Dues collection to support priests of the Dublin Archdiocese after revenue generated by weekly churches collections collapsed as a result of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Finances have been “severely impacted” by the pandemic, Archbishop Farrell has said with the drop in income from the usual two collections at Sunday Masses down by “80per cent and 86 per cent respectively for the first quarter (January to March 2021).”
The initiative, which is aimed at making up a portion of the shortfall, will follow the pattern of the Christmas and Easter dues collections giving parishioners an opportunity to contribute to the income that supports priests.
“The Summer Offering collection will be launched on the weekend of the 20th June,” he said in a letter to parishioners.
The High Court will hear the case of a couple who aborted their unborn child after being wrongly told it had a fatal condition.
At a preliminary hearing yesterday Justice Kevin Cross set June 22nd as the beginning of a five day trial.
The Couple are suing Merrion Fetal Health clinic and the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin.
They say the Hospital diagnosed their unborn child with Trisomy 18 or Edwards Syndrome.
The woman claims her consultant advised the baby was non-viable and there was no point in waiting for a full analysis of the results.
She says she relied totally on this advice and an abortion was carried out on March 14th 2019 in the clinic.
Subsequently, the full analysis was provided to her and, she says, it showed her unborn child did not have Trisomy 18 and was a normal healthy baby boy.
In the face of a growing demographic and economic crisis, China is to allow couples have up to three children.
The Communist Party Politburo approved the change at a meeting chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.
The country imposed a one-child policy in 1979 that involved forced sterilisations and abortions.
Restrictions were loosened in 2015, allowing up to two children per family.
However, 2020 saw an 18 percent decline in births to a near six-decade low. Part of this decline will have been due to the Covid lockdown.
Political commentator Ed Morrissey said four decades of brutal hostility to having more than one child has created a lasting impact on China’s culture, and the consequences of that policy cannot be easily undone. However, the whole of East Asia, including Japan, has well-below replacement fertility levels.
