Gardaí are investigating after a Catholic oratory and cross were daubed with swastikas.
Volunteers who look after the oratory at Cnoc a Chomórtais or Scouthea Hill outside Clonmel, Co Tipperary, discovered it had been vandalised when they arrived to make preparations ahead of the annual August bank holiday Mass.
Volunteer Tony Cronin said they were “shocked” to find the Nazi insignia spray painted a number of times on the tiny religious structure.
Clonmel parish priest Fr Michael Twomey said he believed it was a “sad act of vandalism from some disturbed individuals”.
“Sadly, there has been other vandalism in past years, including oil poured upon the altar area and fencing damaged,” he said. “But this incident has deeply saddened and shocked many parishioners and the people of Clonmel as a whole – young and old.”
Local Independent TD Mattie McGrath said: “Some people are suggesting that wayward young people are behind this, but I don’t agree. I think it is something more sinister.”
A UCG academic is advocating that children be taught the ‘positive’ as well as the negative aspects of porn.
Writing on the RTE.ie website, Kate Dawson said “there is a real need for youth to be equipped with information about pornography and be supported in developing skills necessary to critique sexual representations in media so that they can make healthy and informed decisions about their sexual lives.”
Defining porn literacy as “the ability to deconstruct and critique sexual messages in pornography”, she said it would facilitate “discussions on the positive, negative and neutral outcomes” of porn, so as to “help young people to understand how personal beliefs vary about the appropriateness of sexual practices seen in porn”. This would enable them to become “critical thinkers” about porn and sex.
One of her recommendations for porn literacy educational initiatives would be to reduce shame around porn use so as to encourage conversations about the sexual encounters portrayed in porn, particularly regarding sexual consent, body image and self-esteem.
“By reinforcing stigma and shame (saying porn is bad, don’t watch it), we close off conversations.”
Ms Dawson caused outrage earlier this year when she appeared on ITV’s This Morning show to advocate masturbation classes for primary school children.
State secondary schools are not implementing a directive from the Department of Education requiring them to timetable alternative tuition for students who opt out of religion due to a lack of resources.
The circular applies to State-run schools, such as community schools or those run by Education and Training Boards (ETBs), which account for about half of secondary schools or 160,000 pupils.
However, according to the Irish Times, new documents show most State schools are not implementing the circular on the basis that they do not have resources to provide alternative tuition.
ETB schools, for example, were recently directed by their umbrella body to “maintain the status-quo in relation to the provision of religious education and opting-out arrangements”.
Nessa White, general secretary of Education and Training Boards Ireland, confirmed that the umbrella body’s advice saying “our schools have not been provided with any additional resources to provide alternative classes to students who opt out. Our schools cater for these students to the best of their ability with the resources currently available to them.”
The campaign group Atheist Ireland said the failure of State schools to implement these measures means non-religious students are being discriminated against. “The practical application of maintaining the status quo means students who exercise their constitutional and human right not to attend religious teaching cannot access another optional subject,” said Jane Donnelly of Atheist Ireland.
The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent, Carl Hulse, sincerely believes a shadowy “cabal” of Roman Catholic operatives has been working quietly to stack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion activists. His colleague, columnist Maureen Dowd, also believes a sort of Catholic “deep state” has infiltrated the court.
Dowd interviewed Hulse earlier this month and asked him about six of the nine justices on the Court being Catholic [Catholics were 20.8% of the population as of 2018. One of the six is the Obama-nominated liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and another was baptised and raised Catholic but is now a member of the Episcopalian Church] and the numerous Catholics involved in proposing the Trump Administration’s judicial picks.
Hulse said, “It’s just a fact, hard to explain. I honestly think that anti-abortion ideology is part of this, but there is a serious Catholic sort of mafia, which is probably not another term I should be using, that is driving this.”
The previous month, during a separate interview with Dowd, Hulse said, “There is a Catholic cabal . . . And it totally plays into the abortion rights fight.”
He added, “There is, like, a real Catholic underground that is influencing this probably in an outsized way.”
Atheist parents are taking their children’s primary school to the High Court in the UK, claiming that biblical re-enactments and praying in assembly are a breach of their human rights.
Lee Harris and his wife Lizanne have won permission to bring a judicial review against Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust (ODST) arguing that the school’s practices interferes with their children’s right to receive an education “free from religious interference”.
ODST is a multi-academy trust that runs 33 schools, all of which are Church of England bar four, including Burford Primary, which are designated as non-religious “community schools”.
All church and community schools are required, by law, to provide a “daily act of collective worship”. Burford Primary holds a daily assembly for children which features “exclusively Christian prayer”, Mr and Mrs Harris say.
They add that once a week there is a longer assembly which involves an external Christian group “dressing as biblical characters” and acting out Christian stories including the crucifixion.
When they asked to withdraw their children, aged eight and ten, from the longer assembly, they were “left to play with an iPad” while a teaching assistant watched over them, according to the parents.
By failing to provide an alternative that is of “equal educational worth”, they claim the school has breached its public sector equality duty to have “due regard” to people’s beliefs and has also breached the children’s human right by denying them education.
The school also holds various functions in a Church, including a harvest event and the Year Six leavers event, where every pupil is given a bible.
Mr and Mrs Harris say that they do not want their children to attend these events, which leaves them “deprived of the benefit of what should be important elements of school and community life”. This amounts to another breach of equalities laws since their children are effectively being discriminated against, they argue.
Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said that requiring children to participate in religious worship and then “marginalising them if in good conscience they cannot”, ignores their right to freedom of religion or belief.
A former BBC boss has criticised the corporation for taking part in this weekend’s Pride parade in Belfast.
Writing in the letters page of the Belfast Telegraph, Ian Kennedy said he believed the BBC had “made a mistake in allowing its staff to participate in the Pride Festival as BBC representatives”.
Mr Kennedy, who is now retired, is a former head of BBC Radio Ulster and head of BBC NI television, as well as head of broadcasting for the south and east of England.
He said that while he “wholeheartedly” supported “equality for the LGBT+ community, including equal marriage rights”, participation in the parade as BBC representatives called into question the broadcaster’s impartiality.
“Whilst of course there should be no restrictions on any of them attending in a private capacity, I have problems on two specific counts,” Mr Kennedy wrote.
“First of all, the question of equal marriage is unfortunately unresolved in Northern Ireland. Whilst this remains the case, the BBC must be seen to be impartial on this subject and indeed on any contentious political issue, especially because it is in receipt of licence fee income from all sections of the community.
“Secondly, I find it very disappointing that the senior management of BBC NI has failed to face up to journalists’ questions on its stance – again because it should be seen to be responsive to all sections of the community that it seeks to serve.”
The Catholic bishop of Galway has condemned an attack on a local Mosque.
Bishop Brendan Kelly said he was “dismayed and shocked at the willful and malicious assault made last night on the Maryam Mosque in our city,” and he wholeheartedly condemned the actions of the perpetrators.
The mosque, which is located on the Monivea Road on the outskirts of Galway city, was “badly and severely vandalised” late on Sunday night.
A statement from the mosque said locks and windows were broken during the attack and security camera equipment was stolen from inside the building.
This is the second time the mosque has been vandalised since it opened in 2014 with the first attack in 2017.
Members of Galway’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community say they are feeling terrified following an attack in the early hours of Monday morning
Bishop Kelly said he would visit his “good friend” Iman Ibrahim Noonanto to assure him of his personal support and prayers and to convey to him the very deep sense of outrage felt across the Christian community.
“An attack on a place of worship is an assault on God and an assault on all people of faith. We stand in solidarity with our Muslim neighbours. With them, we reject violence, we reject division and we reject hate,” he said.
There has been a surge in religious restrictions in Europe over the last decade including measures to ban the wearing of Muslim head-scarves and similar clothing in public places.
That’s according to the findings of a recent Pew Research Center report that analyses restrictions on religion (by both governments and private individuals or social groups) from 2007 to 2017.
The report measures various types of government restrictions and social hostilities across eight different categories on a scale from zero to 10. In one of these categories – government limits on religious activity – Europe’s score doubled over a 10-year period. This was one of the largest increases in any of the five global regions analyzed.
Europe’s score also rose sharply in the category of government harassment of religious groups. In one year of our analysis, 2015, religious groups in 38 out of 45 European countries reported at least limited levels of harassment.
In addition to government actions, there also was a dramatic increase in Europe in some measures of social hostility to religion. Europe’s score in the category of social hostilities related to religious norms increased by a factor of four over a decade, exceeding the global average.
A Christian street preacher who was arrested, handcuffed and taken away by police for ‘hate speech’ has been awarded £2,500 for wrongful arrest.
The former dentist was preaching outside Southgate Tube station in North London in February when a passer-by called police and accused Oluwole Ilesanmi, 64, of ‘Islamophobic’ speech. Approached by police he said he described Islam as an ‘aberration’ but insisted he was simply expressing his point of view as a Christian rather than denigrating Muslims. The police accused him of racism, arrested him for ‘breaching the peace’, wrested his from him bible, and drove him to a location four miles away, after which they ‘dearrested him’.
The arrest was captured on camera and posted online and has since been viewed ten million times. The case was raised in Parliament and a petition with 38,000 signatures calling for greater religious freedom for Christian street pastors will be delivered to Government next week.
Scotland Yard has now agreed to pay Mr Ilesanmi £2,500 for wrongful arrest and his humiliating and distressing treatment.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: ‘Despite laws that theoretically support the freedom to preach in public, in practice police officers are quick to silence preachers at the first suggestion that a member of the public is offended.’
150 years ago this month the Church of Ireland was removed from its role as Ireland’s State Church by an Act of the UK Parliament.
The Irish Church Act 1869 separated the Church of Ireland from the Church of England and disestablished the former. The Act meant the Church of Ireland was no longer entitled to collect tithes from the people of Ireland although existing clergy of the church received a life annuity instead. It also ceased to send representative bishops to the House of Lords in Westminster.
Royal assent was given to the Act on 26 July 1869 and it was commenced on 1 January 1871.
Commenting on the matter to the Irish Times, Canon Patrick Comerford said leading Church of Ireland figures feared the “very worst for the future” and a “very dismal catastrophe”. However, those fears were never realised.
“The Church of Ireland was left in possession of the cathedrals, churches and church schools then in use – which might not have been the fate of an established Church of Ireland at independence half a century later,” he said.
Dr Ida Milne, lecturer in European history at Carlow College, says disestablishment meant little to those made their livings as tenants rather than the professional classes that were a key element of the political and social Protestant establishment.
“We probably find the historic connection to the Church of Ireland establishment and the inequality it created in society an embarrassment, and would in the past have been teased about it,” she says.
