Faith leaders have called on planners to make room for churches, synagogues and mosques in the development of new communities.

Writing in the Irish Times, Imam Shamsudeen MacSeain and Fr Edmond Grace SJ say for anyone who is part of a faith community, congregational worship is “as fundamental to their wellbeing as a school or a hospital”.

However, they note that there is “no reference in the National Planning Framework to providing space for worship, as part of creating spaces that build and sustain communities”.

They add that this will be “a significant need for the various ethnic and religious groups living in Ireland today and in the years ahead”.

“This will call for fundamental change in our attitude to land and its use. After air and water, it is the most valued resource in every society”, they write.

Almost a third of Church of England congregations have “zero children” according to official figures.

The ‘Statistics for Mission 2023’ report gathered precise stats on church attendance in October 2023 and found “a significant number of churches report no children/young people worshipping with them”.

The report adds: “In 2023, 31% of churches had an October average weekly attendance of zero children aged under 16, compared to 25% of churches in 2019”.

Commenting on the report, Professor Linda Woodhead of Kings College London told The Times, “The Church of England has been in decline for decades and the main reason for this is a failure of transmission from parents to children. The loss of children is of the utmost significance in predicting further decline. A majority church has become a minority one.”

A new resource has been created to provide guidance to schools, teachers and parents about online influencers promoting traditional models of masculinity.

The guide has been created by Dr Darragh McCashin and Dr Catherine Baker from Dublin City University, alongside Dr Fiona O’Rourke.

Dr McCashin said there has been “a rise in traditional masculinity attitudes in the classroom” and, he cited reports in Australia and the UK, that this has coincided with “an uptick in misogynistic and sexist attitudes and behaviours, particularly from pre-teen boys”.

“Higher levels are being observed, and this chimes with the recent Women’s Aid report on younger men exhibiting much higher levels of traditionalist masculinity than other generations, which is something that hasn’t really been observed before.

“Normally, it’s older generations that endorse kind of very traditional views of masculinity as it relates to attitudes about women, sex, sexuality, the role of men in the home.

“All of that kind of points to the fact that the manosphere online content might be having an adverse impact on boys and men in terms of their progression to very traditionalist notions of what it is to be a man, what masculinity actually means.

The Master of the Rotunda maternity hospital has claimed ‘kindness’ should be at the heart of conducting abortions. His remark has been criticised by the Pro-Life Campaign.

In an interview with the Irish Times, Prof Sean Daly was quoted as saying he “really believe[s] that kindness is the essence of care”.

In response, the Pro Life Campaign released a statement asking if he seriously believes, “the abortion regime that operates in the Rotunda Hospital under his watch is a true and serious example of kindness and care in practice?”

“Has he any concerns at all about the soaring abortion rate in Ireland since the law changed? In his desire to put kindness at the centre of everything, has he taken the time to meet with and listen to the stories of women who chose to abort their babies at his hospital and now deeply regret their decision?”

A third of today’s young American adults will never marry, projects think tank the Institute for Family Studies, compared to less than a fifth of those born in previous decades.

The share of childless adults under 50 who say they are unlikely to ever have kids, meanwhile, rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023, from 37% to 47%, according to Pew Research Center.

Although some 30-somethings are consciously choosing a less traditional path, many say these goals are simply out of reach.

As a mix of social and economic factors holds back an entire generation, what researchers once called a lag, they now say is starting to look like a permanent state of arrested development.

“We’re moving from later to never,” says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. He notes that the longer people take to launch into a more conventional adulthood, the less likely they are to do it at all.

Pope Francis ushered in the New Year with a renewed appeal for the faithful to reject abortion and euthanasia, calling for a “firm commitment” to protect and respect life from conception to natural death.

Francis, 88, celebrated a New Year’s Day Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday that was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

In his homily, he prayed that everyone learns to care for “every child born of a woman” and to protect “the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying.”

“I ask for a firm commitment to respect the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person may cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to the future,” he said.

About 245,000 people accessed the State-funded contraception scheme at least once during the first nine months of 2024, new figures show.

The scheme was introduced in September 2022, initially for women aged between 17 and 25 and has since been expanded to include 26 to 35-year-olds despite a 2019 Working Group on Access to Contraception, under the then Health Minister, Simon Harris, say the proposal would probably be a waste of public funds.

The scheme is projected to reach 320,000 women by the end of the year.

This compares with just under 189,000 women who accessed the scheme in 2023.

A total of €48m was allocated to the scheme this year and almost 2,400 GPs and 2,050 pharmacies are providing services under the scheme.

The Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin, has called on the government to create a new senior office: a minister for the family.

“We just had that [family and care] referendum back in March in which the people of Ireland resoundingly said that family, motherhood and, by connection, home are important to them,” Martin said in an interview with the Sunday Times.

“If we are rebranding the government for a new mandate, why not have a ministry dedicated to the family?”

He added that the referendum result showed that the Irish people were opposed to attempts to “downscale” the societal value of mothers.

The minister’s portfolio should include devising strategies to better support carers, lone parents and motherhood, he argued.

“The family founded upon marriage is fundamental in this country, and the people said that very clearly and unequivocally in the referendum. So why not now name it and invest our time, our energies, our resources into supporting family and marriage and mothers?”

The 11 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors on Sunday.

Videos circulating online show around thirty predominantly elderly protesters who walked up the main church aisle after Holy Communion, carrying a variety of placards, including of injured children.

The protest received widespread condemnation on social media including from people who support the Palestinian cause and are sharply critical of Israel.

The priest celebrating the Mass appealed to them, saying: “To those of you who have come into our church at a most inappropriate time, to make your protest, . . . the Irish people have not been silent, and the Irish people have supported the voice and the actions of our government”.

“I would also like you to know that the Catholic community living in Gaza is especially in our thoughts and prayers, as well as all the people of Gaza and Palestinians everywhere”.

He then asked them to leave.

A similar protest occurred during mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, two weeks ago.

The group demanded that Christian churches, “unequivocally condemn Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.

This is despite the fact the the bishops have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, the Church largely leans towards the Palestinians, and the crib in St Peter’s Square in Rome featured the Palestinian scarf at one point.

The number of Christians in Bethlehem and the wider West Bank has plummeted in recent years, a trend that has only accelerated since the October 7 attack last year.

Father Issa Thaljieh of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, said his congregation has fallen from 6,000 to 3,000 during his 13 years at the church. Ten families have left within the past few weeks.

“People are running from this place because they have no freedom, no security, no jobs,” said Thaljieh, 42, whose family have lived in Bethlehem for more than 200 years.

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, economic pressures have been made markedly worse by the Israeli government’s tightening of movement restrictions for Palestinians.

An increasingly belligerent and emboldened Jewish settler movement also threatens to isolate Bethlehem behind a palisade of state-sanctioned settlements approved this year by Israel’s hard-right finance minister.

The threat of Islamic extremism is also of great concern, with one local saying that were anything to happen in Palestine like the takeover in Syria by a group once linked to jihadists he would leave immediately.