An American bishop has been attacked by three Irish Government ministers for tweeting that Catholics should not participate in gay pride celebrations.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, posted on Saturday: ‘A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ “Pride Month” events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”
In response, Culture Minister Josepha Madigan tweeted: “Not the God I know. Disgraceful. !?”.
Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty called the Bishop’s comments ‘unchristian’, writing: “I think this is so so sad and probably THE most unchristian thing to do – to isolate and discriminate. NOT ON,” followed by an angry emoji.
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan added his own condenations, writing: “So dispiriting but alas not surprising. Complete absence of tolerance, understanding & compassion. So sad & disappointing”.
Bishop Tobin followed up his earlier tweet with a statement expressing ‘regret’ that his comments turned out to be so ‘controversial’ in our community, and ‘offensive to some’. He added that, as a Catholic Bishop, however, his obligation before God is ‘to lead the faithful entrusted to my care and to teach the faith, clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues’.
One candidate in the local elections made history this week by becoming Ireland’s first black female county councillor.
Nigerian-born, evangelical Christian, Yemi Adegua was elected to represent the Navan area of Meath county council.
Her success ruffled the feathers of some people though, not because of her ethnicity, but because she gave glory to God in a joyful social media post that garnered over 3600 ‘likes’.
One respondent offered his congratulations to her but added a plea ‘on behalf of the new Ireland’, that she ‘leave the religion out of it’. Another wrote, ‘Congrats but please leave the god stuff back in Nigeria’, and another: ‘First black person. Great stuff. The God stuff. Less great depending on how it affects your policies.’
A further tweet said ‘Congratulations. Really pleased to see the beginnings of diversity in our councils. But please: lay off the religious stuff we live in a republic and trying hard to separate church and state.’
And another said: ‘Extraordinary to see religion attempt to insinuate itself again into Irish politics. We spent long enough getting it out’
The French Senate passed a bill on Monday that Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral must be rebuilt to its “last known visual state.”
This is in opposition to French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for “an inventive reconstruction” of the roof and spire which were destroyed in the fire that engulfed the building in April. It also goes counter to an international competition proposed by the French Government for a new design that would rebuild the spire ‘adapted to techniques and challenges of our times’.
The Cathedral is the property of the French state ever since it was seized in 1789 during the French Revolution, and although the Catholic Church now has exclusive use of the building, the Government is responsible for building maintenance and repairs.
According a poll conducted by YouGov from Le HuffPost and CNews, 54 percent of French adults want to restore the cathedral to its original form, with another 25 percent seeking a modern addition. 21 percent of respondents did not have an opinion on the matter.
The Archbishop of Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Britain’s leaders of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq. This is despite Britain recently issued a report on the persecution of Christians. The Irish Government never highlights the issue preferring to refer to persecution of religion generally.
In an address in London, the Rt Rev Bashar Warda said Iraq’s Christians now faced extinction after 1,400 years of persecution.
Since the US-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, he said, the Christian community had dwindled by 83%, from around 1.5 million to just 250,000.
He referred to the current, pressing threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a “final, existential struggle”, following the group’s initial assault in 2014 that displaced more than 125,000 Christians from their historic homelands.
The archbishop went on to accuse Britain’s Christian leaders of “political correctness” over the issue. He called the failure to condemn extremism “a cancer”, saying they were not speaking out loudly enough for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
“Will you continue to condone this never-ending, organised persecution against us?” he said. “When the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say ‘We are all Christians’?”
More older women are having abortions in Scotland, with the overall number rising to a ten-year high. Figures show 13,286 women aged 15 to 44 had abortions last year – a rate of 12.9 per 1,000 – up from a figure of 12,212 in 2017. This compares with Ireland’s rate of 4.9 per 1000 prior to the repeal of the Eighth amendment. This counts women who travelled to England for abortions.
The Scottish figures also showed rates for women in the most deprived areas remain about twice as high as those from the least deprived areas at 17.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 compared to 8.9.
For the first time the figures include the number of women taking a drug to induce the second part of a two-stage medical abortion process at home, rather than in a medical clinic. Almost a third (30 per cent) of abortions were performed in this manner.
Michael Robinson, from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Scotland said the statistics were “deeply alarming”.
“Not only are we seeing a ten-year high, 13,286 abortions annually or the equivalent of 255 a week, we are once again seeing some of the most vulnerable women in society forced by circumstance to end the life of their unborn child,” he said. “Women deserve better than abortion and the right to life must be defended for every person.”
The solicitor for the couple who had their baby aborted at the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street after a wrongful diagnosis has expressed frustration at the lack of progress in setting up an investigation.
Experts from the Royal College of Obstetricians are supposed to be appointed to examine the circumstances of the case.
However, solicitor for the couple, Caoimhe Haughey, said Tuesday that “at this stage we still do not know if the Royal College will do so”.
She added: “It is not clear if they are in a position to undertake an investigation and secondly if they are willing to do so.”
Parents have staged a protest outside an Educate Together school in Dublin calling for the board of management to resign over a row about Relationships and Sexuality Education being taught by Catholic organisation, Accord.
Accord is a marriage counselling organisation attached to the Bishops’ Conference. It teaches about contraception in a morally-neutral way and it counsels couples in same-sex marriages. It receives State funding.
The parents are from Castleknock Educate Together National School (CETNS). The protest was organised to coincide with an Accord information event for parents, which was cancelled yesterday, but the protest went ahead anyway. Educate Together schools are non-demoninational.
The organisation issued a statement saying “it is not appropriate for a religious-run organisation to deliver RSE in the context of an equality-based Educate Together school”. It added: “To this end, Educate Together will be writing to all schools under its patronage to ask them to ensure that relationships and sexuality education is delivered in a way that is consistent with its ethos and free from religious bias”.
Earlier this year, the CETNS parent teacher association said it could not see how an organisation “funded by the Catholic Church and with a clear religious ethos could ever have been deemed ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver the RSE programme in an Educate Together school”.
An email seeking support for the protest said: “This is about the parents of children making their voices heard within the school, and letting both the board and Educate Together know that secular instruction, in line with their stated ethos, is what we want for our children.”
The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution creating an “International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief” has been established by the United Nations. The day will be observed each year on 22 August.
The move has been welcomed by groups promoting religious freedom amid recent reports by both US and UK government entities that religious persecution is globally on the rise.
Kelsey Zorzi, President of the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief at the United Nations and Director of Advocacy for Global Religious Freedom for ADF International said nobody should be persecuted because of their faith.
“We welcome this clear statement from the United Nations that persecution on the basis of religion or belief cannot be permitted and the victims must never be forgotten”. She added that resolutions alone are not enough and urged all states to ensure that “their laws and policies are in line with their commitments to protect religious freedom under international law”.
There were just 72 domestic adoptions recorded by the Adoption Authority of Ireland last year, according to the Irish Daily Mail. By contrast, there were 190 such adoptions in 2009 which represents a drop of 60% in just nine years. The decline in adoption across the West has coincided with an increase in the number of abortions.
The Domestic Adoption Unit said the number of infants placed for adoption is now in the minority.
A frequent route to adoption these days is for children to spend time in foster care and then, after two years, to be adopted by their foster parents.
Mark Kirwan of AAI said that a ‘cultural shift’ has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of infants placed for adoption in Ireland. In 2009, there were 74,728 births, with 33% of those registered to unmarried couples. Previously, in 1980, only 5% of the 74,064 babies were born to unmarried couples while 1115 babies were adopted.
A French feminist group, the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (ICASM), asked candidates in this month’s European election candidates to support the abolition of surrogacy.
In its open letter, it says: “Surrogacy violates the rights of children and the rights of women by contributing to a society based on the use and abuse of persons, organizing a first and second class of human beings, promoting an unequal global order discriminatory between human beings.”
It demands not just more regulation for surrogacy, but its abolition.
ICASM contends that surrogacy commercialises women’s bodies, promotes the sale of children, increases inequality between women, and does not satisfy rights claims (it claims that there is no right to motherhood or to children), among other objections to legalising surrogacy.
