A Vietnamese family have been “brutally attacked” because of their Christian faith, according to Open Doors charity who serve persecuted Christians around the world.
The family of three were forcibly removed from their home in a village in Northern Vietnam.
They were then beaten, and the six-year-old daughter was beaten so badly she fell into a coma for a month. She has now regained consciousness but does not recognise her parents or remember the incident.
The family had recently stopped the village practice of ancestor worship and become Christians. The local authorities and the whole village had reportedly become angry with their decision to change their religion.
Refusing to deny their faith, the villagers carried out attacks, Open Doors said the family were, “mocked, tied with ropes and severely beaten while being dragged over rocky ground towards the entrance of the village, forcing them to leave.”
A Bishop says Catholic educators are increasingly likely to be condemned “as heretics” if they continue to speak about God and promote traditional faith values within their schools.
Dr Donal McKeown said that criticism of Catholic education will continue to grow, “because we are doing such a good job of daring to speak a counter-cultural message into our society.”
He added: “We will increasingly be condemned for being heretics if we are crazy enough to speak openly about love, community, forgiveness, virtue, family and responsibility rather than just grades and famous past pupils.”
He said some challenges come from those who criticise the existence of faith-based schools and who would prefer that “education could be the only area of society where we don’t have choices”.
Dr McKeown said, “Many will shout for our removal if we are brazen enough to speak of a God who gives meaning to our lives whether we are rich or poor, glamourous or frail, hero or villain.”
Speaking on the theme, ‘The path I walk, Christ walks it’, the bishop stressed, “Our schools do not seek merely to offer a good secular education with a bit of RE fluff on the side.”
In order to advance ‘gender equality’, G7 leaders have been told to promote extreme Canada-style abortion laws, which permit abortion up to birth, as well as censor online pro-life content deemed to be ‘misleading’.
The Gender Equality Advisory Council said that removing all legal safeguards and allowing abortion up to birth is recommended good practice. It also adds: “Prohibit misinformation on safe abortion” and “Right to choose and right to have a safe abortion” as ways to advance gender equality.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said: “It is not at all clear how promoting extreme abortion legislation (or any abortion legislation for that matter) advances the empowerment of women. As is well-known by now, sex-selective abortion is responsible for 63 million women “missing” women in India alone and likely millions more in across the globe.”
“Ironically the Gender Equality Advisory Council is promoting a practice which has women as its primary victims.”
Mayo University Hospital has confirmed that 11 medical abortions have been performed in the facility since the enactment of abortion legislation on January 1st.
That’s according to a report that appeared in the Connaught Telegraph this week.
The hospital also revealed that five nurses/midwives and five doctors have raised concerns about conscientious objection, while there has been one refusal to provide an abortion.
Cora Sherlock of the Pro-Life Campaign tweeted that, “11 human beings have had their lives deliberately ended in Mayo. All those who proposed, or voted for, the most extreme abortion law in Europe are responsible for this atrocity.”
In January a staff member of the Hospital was disciplined for airing his anti-abortion views on a social media posting while wearing his uniform.
Professional childminders will be regulated by Government for the first time under plans announced on Thursday by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone.
The move will allow parents who use paid childminders who are not relatives or family members to avail of the new national childcare scheme (NCS), which is due to begin on October 29th and will replace a range of childcare support schemes.
The new scheme entitles families to financial supports, based on income, to access private and community childcare facilities.
Under the new draft plan, support and regulation in the sector will be extended to all paid, non-relative childminders, with a “phased approach” to the reforms.
The childminders will have to be Garda vetted and be trained in first aid. They will also be required to have “bespoke” qualifications, although the department has not yet decided what level these will be at.
The plan mainly addresses childminders who work in their own homes and who are self-employed. It does not propose to regulate nannies or au-pairs.
A Dutch doctor who carried out euthanasia on a 74-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s is being tried for murder, in the first court case since the Netherlands legalised the procedure.
However, the public prosecution is not asking for a punishment.
A 68-year-old retired nursing home doctor, named as Catharina A., was charged with murder for carrying out euthanasia on the woman in April 2016.
The doctor had given a sedative to the patient in her coffee and asked family members to hold her down when the woman appeared to struggle against a drip to administer the fatal medicine.
The controversial case comes amid a period of concern about euthanasia involving people with psychiatric problems and dementia in the Netherlands.
The case has provoked strong responses. Jaap Schuurmans, a GP and researcher, was one of 450 doctors to sign a petition saying they would not perform euthanasia for an incapacitated patient. He told The Daily Telegraph: “There is an urgent need for this case. Doctors are being put under moral and time pressure from families, and this is a real worry.”
But Agnes Wolbert, chairman of the NVVE pro-euthanasia organisation, argued in a statement that the case should never have come to court. “The woman was clearly suffering, and the doctor had already been lightly censured by the medical ethics board. That is where it should have stopped.”
The Netherlands has since 2002 allowed citizens to request euthanasia if they are experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement, and their doctor fulfils statutory due care criteria.
Persecuted Christian minorities have requested that their plight not be singled out for special mention, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney has said.
He added that this is why the Government doesn’t specifically condemn the persecution of Christians.
While calling the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and North Africa “a deeply disturbing matter”, he noted how Ireland “most often expresses these concerns in [terms] applicable to all minorities, rather than particular ones.”
This, he said, in many cases was at the request of “local Christian and other minority representatives.” It was the case that “explicit messages of support from western countries only expose them further to the (unjust) accusation that their communities are somehow legacies of or agents for western intervention in the region,” he said.
He was responding to a letter from Senator Neale Richmond about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa.
Additional childcare subsidies for parents in work or education are being sought by Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone in the upcoming budget.
The proposals include nothing for parents who take care of their children in the home.
The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) sees parents who are working or in education eligible for targeted subsidised childcare. The sums vary depending on income level and the child’s age, but parents can apply for as much as 40 hours of childcare per week.
It is understood Ms Zappone’s Budget proposals include:
Extending the number of hours available to up to 45 hours from September 2020;
Increasing after-school childcare hours from 17 to 22 hours per week;
Adding five hours to the 15 currently on offer to parents who are seeking employment.
The NCS that kicks in at the end of October sees a parent qualify for up to 40 hours a week in subsidies if they and their partner are working, studying or transitioning between work and study. The definition of work includes apprenticeships, part-time and people on zero-hours contracts. Study includes any education or training programme on the National Framework of Qualifications.
Consent classes are to be rolled out to secondary schools and sports clubs across the country.
The Smart Consent workshops had been originally developed for college campuses by Pádraig MacNeela and Siobhán O’Higgins, from NUIG’s School of Psychology. The programme has now been adapted to suit the age profile of school students.
The programme will be launched in schools in early 2020. However, several schools have already had the workshop.
All sexual orientations and gender identities are included, as is the role of alcohol and drugs in consent.
The organisers say they now plan to work with various networks and groups to reach young people aged between 16 and 24 years old through third level, second level and sports clubs too.
Caroline West, a lecturer and researcher in sexuality studies at DCU, had facilitated these workshops at third level and welcomes the news that they will be rolled out to even younger ages.
“As someone who’s facilitated this class at third level I sometimes feel it’s too late,” she said. “We need to talk to a younger age. People are already having sex before they come to university and assaults have already occurred. If we have the conversation earlier, then consent is normalised.”
Voters are more vulnerable to believing fake news stories if they match their own personal worldviews or ideologies, according to a new University College Cork study analysing the 2018 Eighth Amendment vote.
It found that people are 14 times more likely to claim they remember a fake story if it matches their own beliefs.
The study, by University College Cork’s Dr Gillian Murphy, was one of the largest of its kind ever carried out in Ireland.
With concerns about fake news growing, the research suggests that everyone is susceptible to false news stories – especially if they appeal to pre-existing beliefs.
The research, which took place in the weeks leading up to voting day, used the 2018 referendum to find out how likely people were to believe and “remember” fake stories.
“The implications for upcoming elections are that voters are vulnerable to not just believing a fake news story, but falsely recalling that the event truly happened,” Murphy said.
“Warnings don’t seem to help and so we need to develop new strategies to combat this problem,” she added.
