Cardinal Vincent Nichols has called the way in which the assisted suicide/euthanasia Bill is being handled by the UK government a “shambles”.

“I believe it is deeply irresponsible of any government to allow a change of this magnitude to be carried out without due, proper, government-supported parliamentary process,” said Cardinal Nichols.

“I think what’s happening, if it came to pass, would be the biggest change that this country has seen for many, many decades at least, probably more. On the back of what – five, six, seven hours’ debate?”

He added: “I was told that the fox hunting bill [in 2004] endured 700 hours of debate.”

Cardinal Nichols said that there was “something deeply lacking in a government that isn’t prepared to guide and sponsor, if it wants to, this process of legal change”, describing the ongoing process around the Bill as a “shambles”.

Despite these concerns, the cardinal said he still hopes that the Bill could be defeated.

Meanwhile, the Labour MP pushing the bill has made a concession that doctors would be banned from raising the option of assisted dying without discussing alternatives and must provide detailed assessments of patients’ mental capacity to decide their fate.

Placing countries that violate religious liberties on a watchlist of the world’s worst offenders is not enough to prevent future violations, according to a panel discussion at the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit held in Washington, D.C., this week.

The panel discussed the limitations of the State Department’s tool for combatting global religious persecution with USCIRF Chairman Stephen Schneck saying the country of particular concern (CPC) designation “really only works as an instrument for naming and shaming.”

“Real sanctions, real consequences on the ground in some practical way of effectiveness — that’s just not there in the way that the CPC designations currently work,” Schneck said. “We need to change the CPC designation in such a fashion that it has actionable consequences on the ground.”

The UK’s euthanasia/assisted suicide bill will “undermine daily efforts to prevent suicide”, particularly among the elderly, leading psychiatrists have warned.

A group of 24 experts said they were also “alarmed” by the speed with which the legislation was being pushed through parliament and said that it should instead be “overwhelmingly rejected”.

They argued that the bill could put pressure on patients who were lonely or grieving, or felt like a burden, to take their own lives instead of accessing psychological or psychiatric support.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, proposed by the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, would allow people with less than six months to be legally assisted to end their lives. The law could come into force as soon as 2027.

English Bishop, Bosco MacDonald, has said marriage is a vital building block for a flourishing society.

The comments come ahead of National Marriage Week, celebrated from 7-14 February. However, the bishop’s advice that “we should all be working towards a society that values marriage” is not being heeded by younger generations.

In December 2024, UK charity Marriage Foundation found that just over half of all Gen Z men and women – 57 per cent of those born in 1997 and afterwards – will ever marry.

“This is why we must speak up for marriage and uphold the theme of the week – ‘Hope in Marriage’,” the lead Bishop for Marriage and Family Life said.

“We can offer our contribution towards a culture that respects and values marriage, knowing that it’s the foundation for a happy and healthy society.

“National Marriage Week is a time for all of us to think about this special sacrament and how it can change lives. It’s a chance for married couples to strengthen their bond by being kind to each other, talking openly and sharing experiences.

Several pro-life voices have either been re-elected to the Seanad, or won a seat in it for the first time after counting in the Seanad election finished over the weekend.

Senators Ronan Mullen and Sharon Keoghan were returned to the chamber, while Aontú won its first Seanad seat through Sarah O’Reilly. In addition, Aubrey McCarthy, who opposed the repeal of the 8th amendment won a seat as part of the Trinity College panel.

Two leading opponents on last year’s referendum on carers were also re-elected, namely Tom Clonan on the Trinity panel, and Michael McDowell on the NUI panel.

The new Programme for Government has dropped a plan to investigate allowing under-16s to change the legal designation of their sex and has removed a commitment to implement a controversial ‘no questions asked’, affirmative approach, to gender transitions.

The 2025 programme is radically different in relation to transgender issues to the 2020 programme agreed to by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and even drops a commitment to ensure public bodies use people’s so-called “preferred pronouns”.

Dr Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist at the National Gender Service, said he was relieved to see that implementing WPATH in Ireland was no longer a government aim. Instead, the 2025 programme says the Government will “ensure a transgender healthcare service that is based on clinical evidence, respect, inclusiveness and compassion”.

Online violent pornography is driving much of the violence gardaí are seeing in sexual assaults on women, the Garda Commissioner has said.

Drew Harris told the Policing Authority that the widespread availability of extreme imagery was breeding a “normalisation” of violence against women.

Asked about apparent increases in violence in sexual offences, Mr Harris said: “In respect to the nature of some of the sexual offending that we see reported, in terms of violence perpetrated, the modus operandi of the attack, and how it’s been perpetrated, [it’s] the normalisation of violence against women, through very violent pornography.”

He said that violent adult pornography is, in effect, a “non-regulated” area and pointed out that so much of the resources available to gardaí goes towards dealing with child abuse material.

He said this violent adult imagery is “free and very available” on the internet for anyone with a computer or smartphone.

There has been a call to ensure that new technologies such as biotechnology, digital technology and AI should serve human life and the human family, rather than the other way around.

A group of public intellectuals in the US and Britain released the statement “A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right,” on Wednesday, at the journal First Things. Signatories include leading Catholic academics such as Robert George and Patrick Deneen.

They write that public policy should protect families from harmful innovations while also directing the development of technology to support the flourishing of family life.

To those ends, they offer ten guiding principles for empowering families through technology.

Commenting on the statement, one of its authors Clare Morell, said an electoral coalition that joins pro-family and technological interests catapulted President Trump into the White House. Now, she says, these two groups must begin to govern together, providing the potential, “perhaps for the first time–for modern technology to be designed with the empowerment of the family in mind”.

Another author, Brad Littlejohn, also struck a balance between the beneficial and harmful possibilities. He noted biotechnologies, digital technologies, and AI promise new and “frankly horrifying” possibilities, but nonetheless, many “could be used to empower rather than dissolve the family”.

Britain’s falling birth rate risks increasing the income tax burden on people by one quarter by 2080, a think tank has said.

A report by Policy Exchange calculated that continued low birth rates and the ageing population could result in government spending rising to 58 per cent of GDP.

In the absence of sufficient economic growth, this would require an income tax rise equivalent to 7.4 percentage points, from the current average of 26.4pc of income to 33.9pc of income.

The official fertility rate is now well below replacement level and statistics released at the end of last year showed the number of children born to British mothers has fallen by a quarter in 15 years.

The Policy Exchange report warned there was no “silver bullet” for collapsing birth rates and said high levels of net immigration in recent years had only provided a “temporary fix”.

“To reverse this trend, there would need to be a broader reorientation of policy, taxation and benefits across the board, from the focus on the individual to a system that consistently and systematically supports the family”, it concludes.

Implementing assisted suicide legislation “should not be done at speed”, the Chief Medical Officer for England has said, warning that it is “extremely difficult” to define terminal illnesses.

Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, Professor Chris Whitty urged caution when bringing in a new bill, arguing it could take years to get appropriate safeguards in place.

Under the terms of the bill, terminally ill adults with fewer than six months to live would be enabled to end their lives, subject to approval by two doctors and a High Court judge.

Implementing the new policy would take effect within two years of the bill becoming law, which means it could be in use by 2027.