Children at a primary school in Britain have been told not to sing the word ‘Lord’ in the Christmas carol ‘Away In A Manger’ – so that no pupils feel offended.
The move has left Christian parents appalled, after the head teacher ruled that children should sing ‘baby boy Jesus’ rather than ‘little Lord Jesus’.
The word ‘Lord’ features five times in the most common version of ‘Away In A Manger’ and expresses the belief that Jesus was not just the Jewish Messiah, but also the divine Son of God.
Youngsters at Whitehall Primary School in Chingford, Essex, have also been told to sing edited versions of two modern hymns when they attend a carol service and nativity play at a nearby church on Tuesday.
The words ‘Jesus the saviour’ in the carol Love Shone Down have been replaced with ‘Jesus the baby’, while the words ‘new King born today’ in the carol Come And Join The Celebration have been replaced with ‘a baby born today’.
One furious mother, a former Metropolitan Police officer, said the changes were utterly unacceptable and likened it to taking ‘Christ’ out of Christmas.
The mother, 36, said: ‘If he was just a baby boy named Jesus, there wouldn’t be a celebration in the first place. He is our Lord and Saviour and King of all Kings – that’s the whole point.
Eight Christians in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have been attacked and taken into police custody in the past week. In all of these attacks, radical Hindu nationalists used false allegations of forced religious conversions to justify their assaults and land these eight Christians in jail.
In one incident, Pastor Rahul Para was arrested by police after he was accused by radicals of engaging in forced religious conversions. According to local sources in the Jhabua district, Pastor Para was arrested in the middle of the night and his wife and children were forced to vacate their rented home. As a result, Pastor Para was jailed in the local police station as his wife and children were left with nowhere to go.
In another incident, Pastor Pascal Vadakhiya, also from Jhabua, and three other Christians were attacked by militants after they were found carrying Bibles. According to Pastor Pascal, a gang of radicals, led by Khower Singh, stopped Pastor Pascal and the other Christians while they were traveling by motorbike. When the radicals discovered their Bibles, they beat the four Christians and accused them of engaging in forced religious conversions. The Christians were then handed over to police and were detained for two consecutive days.
A group of cross-community politicians have criticised the UK Government’s proposals to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland. In an open letter to the Belfast Telegraph, the group which includes widely respected human rights expert Baroness Nuala O’Loan and DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, as well as figures from the SDLP and Aontu, say that the current proposals undermine devolution as they go far beyond what is legally required of the Government.
“Northern Ireland was treated with contempt by the Westminster Parliament in July and is now in danger of being treated with even greater contempt by the British Government,” they write. They point to the fact that it was English, Welsh and Scottish MPs who imposed the legislation while every single sitting MP from the North voted against it.
The letter comes after the Government launched a consultation on a new legal framework for abortion in Northern Ireland on 4 November.
Christians in the Gaza Strip will not be allowed to visit holy sites such as Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas this year, Israeli authorities said on Thursday.
Church leaders in Jerusalem are appealing to Israeli authorities to reverse the decision to prohibit the Christmastime travel permits that usually allow a few hundred Christians from the Gaza Strip to visit Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem.
Gaza Christians are allowed travel abroad but not to Israel and the West Bank.
Wadie Abu Nassar, an adviser to local church leaders, criticized the policy.
“Other people around the world are allowed to travel to Bethlehem. We think Gaza’s Christians should have that right, too,” he told Reuters.
One Gaza woman lamented the decision.
“Every year I pray they will give me a permit so I can celebrate Christmas and see my family,” Randa El-Amash, 50, told Reuters. “It will be more joyful to celebrate in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem.”
Slovak parliamentarians have rejected legislation, the first of its kind in the European Union, requiring women seeking abortions to see images and hear the heartbeat of their unborn child first via ultrasound, after vigorous opposition from pro-choice EU politicians and lobby groups.
The bill, an amendment to Slovakia’s Healthcare Act, was tabled by three female MPs from the Slovak National Party (a participant in the ruling coalition), and would also have banned abortion advertising and obliged doctors to notify unwilling mothers of available state support, as well as doubling the mandatory waiting period from two to four days and providing sickness benefit for women wishing to conceal their pregnancies.The bill had the backing of the country’s influential Catholic Church.
However, it failed to secure a majority in the 150-seat lower house, winning just 59 votes to 24, with 40 abstentions, after vigorous opposition from pro-choice EU politicians and human rights groups, including Amnesty International.
Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who said it could reduce “safe and legal abortions”.
The Minister for Health has been called upon to initiate a national conversation on the dangers of pre-natal genetic testing.
The call was made after it was revealed that earlier screening for foetal abnormalities in some hospitals in the UK has resulted in 30% fewer down-syndrome births.
Eilish Mulroy of the Pro-Life Campaign said that a conversation on the realities, limitations and dangers of such screening is long overdue.
“The British experience should alarm us all. We are witnessing the gradual but definite elimination of an entire group of human beings in the context of an abortion culture that pays lip service to respecting difference,” she said.
“We are again urging the Minister for Health to initiate a long over due conversation on the realities, limitations and dangers of pre-natal genetic testing. If we do not have that conversation, then the English findings this week will eventually be reflected here.
“Let’s work towards a society that values difference and welcomes everyone in life and protects everyone in law,” concluded Ms Mulroy.
The Liberal Democrats in the UK are being sued for religious discrimination after allegedly rejecting a candidate because of his Catholic views.
Robert Flello, who was the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South until losing the seat in the 2017 election, defected to the Lib Dems last month after disagreeing with the hard-Left politics of Jeremy Corbyn.
On November 9, he was selected to stand in Thursday’s general election for the Lib Dems in the same seat. But just days later he was told by party officials that his views on abortion and same sex marriage were “not those that would be expected of a liberal” and it was therefore “not appropriate” for him to represent them. He is now suing them in court.
The ethos of faith-based schools to determine what they consider appropriate sex education for their children will be protected, Minister for Education Joe McHugh has said.
He was speaking after the publication of a major review of whether Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) in schools is fit for purpose.
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) has not recommended making legal changes to force denominational schools to teach viewpoints contrary to their characteristic ethos and beliefs.
The review found there were conflicting views on whether school ethos really was affecting the teaching of RSE.
This recommendation contrasts with that of the Oireachtas education committee, which last year recommended that the Education Act be reviewed so that “ethos can no longer be used as a barrier to the effective teaching” of sex education.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Mr McHugh said the ethos of schools would be protected.
“We want to embed in this that it is not a directive, that every school has to follow a certain specific analysis of how we treat this subject,” he said.
Plans to give adopted people the right to access their birth records for the first time have been dropped.
Minister for Children Katherine Zappone announced on Wednesday evening that “despite everyone involved making significant efforts to reach consensus on the issue of release of birth information, it has not proved possible to reach agreement, at this time”.
Ms Zappone said she was “personally deeply disappointed” but added that the issue must be set aside for now.
Nevertheless she said she would progress other measures including that “offences will be created for anyone found to have destroyed, concealed, altered or falsified a record.”
In recent years the State has legalised the alteration of birth certificates in cases where a child is born using donor gametes, through surrogacy, or where a person identifies as a different sex later in life.
The search is underway for 99 members of the public to take part in the next Citizens’ Assembly in January.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has confirmed that the inaugural meeting of the assembly on ‘gender equality’ will take place on Saturday January 25th and the first full meeting will take place from February 14th to 16th.
The electoral register is being used to select the assembly membership who will be “recruited at a national level and randomly selected to be broadly representative of Irish society”, the Taoiseach told the Dáil.
Former Secretary-General of the European Commission Dr Catherine Day will chair the gathering.
Mr Varadkar said there had been “extensive engagement” with relevant experts who will address the assembly and a public consultation will be carried out on gender equality.
A research fellow is due to be appointed shortly to monitor and record how the assembly conducts its work, its “deliberative quality”.
