The Cabinet has agreed to establish a new citizens’ assembly to bring forward proposals on gender equality.
The Assembly will be tasked with discussing the “remaining barriers facilitating gender discrimination” in this county.
Ninety-nine members of the electorate will asked for suggestions on how to ensure women have “full participate at all levels of decision-making”.
The terms of reference will “recognise the importance of early years parental care” and ask the assembly to “examine the co-responsibility for care, especially within the family”.
The chairperson will then report back to the Government with definitive proposals.
A Vatican department has attacked so-called gender theory, and affirmed the principles of human dignity, sexual difference, and complementarity.
In a new document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them”, the Congregation for Catholic Education says that the Church teaches an essential difference between men and woman, ordered in the natural law and essential to the family and human flourishing.
The document says that the aim of the Church must be the education of children in line with authentic principles which defend and instill true human dignity. By contrast, it says, “In practice, the advocacy for the different identities [in gender theory] often presents them as being of completely equal value compared to each other. The generic concept of ‘non-discrimination’ often hides an ideology that denies the difference as well as natural reciprocity that exists between men and women.”
In keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church, it also says that children enjoy the right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother.
The document also underlines the primacy of parents in educating their children, which is supplemented by the subsidiary role of schools and the Church. Quoting Francis, it also says that this educational alliance has entered into crisis.
Minister for Health Simon Harris has applauded the decision by a Dublin Educate Together school to cancel plans for a Catholic agency to give RSE talks.
Accord is a marriage counselling organisation attached to the Bishops’ Conference. It teaches about contraception in a morally-neutral way and it counsels couples in same-sex marriages. It receives State funding.
Accord had delivered the programme at the school for the past number of years but their presence was protested by parents and outside groups such as Atheist Ireland, and the People before Profit TD, Ruth Coppinger.
Minister Harris tweeted his approval of the move calling it “positive news”. He added that RSE should never be delivered from an ethos-based perspective: “Sexual and relationship health is integral to overall health and wellbeing. Important our children have access to unbiased information. We must respect religious belief but all health education must always be based on facts, not ethos.”
The rampant secularism of today’s world has been condemned by Pope Francis.
The Pope’s words appeared in a message to mark World Mission Sunday whose theme this year marks the Church’s mandate from God to bring the message of Christ to the whole world.
The Pope wrote that mission is part of the identity of Christians, adding, “it makes us responsible for enabling all men and women to realize their vocation to be adoptive children of the Father, to recognize their personal dignity and to appreciate the intrinsic worth of every human life, from conception until natural death”.
By contrast, he said, “[t]oday’s rampant secularism, when it becomes an aggressive cultural rejection of God’s active fatherhood in our history, is an obstacle to authentic human fraternity, which finds expression in reciprocal respect for the life of each person.
He continued: “Without the God of Jesus Christ, every difference is reduced to a baneful threat, making impossible any real fraternal acceptance and fruitful unity within the human race.”
The couple at the centre of the #HollesStreetBaby case say they were “led to believe” that there would be an inquiry by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the UK, and now that that is not the case, they feel “abandoned and neglected”.
The couple aborted their baby after it was wrongly diagnosed as suffering from a serious foetal abnormality.
The couple also told RTÉ News: “We did not take the steps to terminate lightly and we were not scared of the prospect of caring or loving a very sick child. We were told this was a fatal foetal abnormality.”
The couple have again called on Minister for Health Simon Harris to intervene to establish an independent, statutory inquiry into their case.
The couple’s solicitor Caoimhe Haughey accused the hospital of “investigating itself” and of “thinking it is above the law”. Ms Haughey also criticised Mr Harris, saying he had responded to calls for him to intervene only through officials “in a half-hearted manner”.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health has said in correspondence with the couple that it has been in contact with Holles Street “seeking assurances of the ongoing safety of termination services”.
The number of unborn babies who died from late-term abortions in New York City in a single year was greater than the number of people killed by homicide, figures have revealed.
The data was released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and published by the New York Police Department. In 2015 the number of abortions in New York City at or after 21 weeks was 1,485 while the number of homicides was 352. However abortions at 21 or more weeks only account for 2.3 per cent of the 63,610 abortions carried out in the city in 2015.
The number of abortions in the state could increase even further after New York passed legislation liberalising abortion law even further. The new law declares that all women who become pregnant have the “fundamental right” to have an abortion. After 24 weeks, abortion is now permitted if the mother’s “health” is endangered, effectively legalising abortion up to birth for any reason.
Lila Rose, founder of pro-life group Live Action, said that “children up until the ninth month of pregnancy can be given lethal injections and poisoned to death. This is no different than infanticide”.
The British Foreign Secretary has written 40 letters to persecuted Christians, according to the religious freedom charity Open Doors.
One such letter was sent to a Nigerian woman who was abducted as a teenager by Boko Haram militants. Jeremy Hunt’s letter to her stated: “I cannot begin to imagine the horrors of what you have suffered. I stand in awe of the great faith that has given you the strength to rebuild your life and dignity.
“I want you to know that you are not alone that British diplomats continue to raise your situation that we continue to fight your corner and that we stand with those who are being denied the basic rights to practice their faiths.”
Erin James of Open Doors said she was “absolutely thrilled to see [Mr Hunt] engaging with Christians like this” and said the woman, Esther, reacted similarly when the charity delivered the letter to her.
“Esther was completely shocked when this letter came through,” she explained.
“She couldn’t believe that he even knew who she was. So it’s so wonderful to see that girl realise how supported she is, how loved she is by Christians in the UK and around the world.”
Mostly Muslim parents who had been demonstrating outside a primary school in Birmingham, UK, against the teaching of same-sex relationships have been banned from the area by court order.
Birmingham City Council was granted a temporary High Court injunction which says people, “shall not… organise, engage in, or encourage any other person to engage in any protest against the teaching of equalities at Anderton Park Primary School”. It also says that people breaking the injunction could be sent to prison.
Education Secretary Damien Hinds welcomed the injunction and said parents should share their views, and schools should listen, but added “However, what is taught and how is ultimately a decision for schools. Consultation does not mean parents have a veto on curriculum content.”
Parents protesting against same-sex relationships classes at the school have said they are being treated worse than fascists and the injunction was “disproportionate and unjust”.
The parents are calling for three things: For the current RSE programme and teaching around LGBTQ relationships at the school to be suspended; a proper consultation involving third parties where the parents, not the school, decide who represents the parents; and, for any future programmes to be both age-appropriate and religiously sensitive.
While the protests have been led by Muslim parents, they have been joined by Christians also.
Former Cabinet minister and Conservative party leadership candidate, Esther McVey, has backed the right of parents to withdraw their children from Relationships Education at primary school. Speaking to Sky News, she said that with young children, “parents need to have the final say”. Local Labour MP Jess Phillips, however, said the parents seem to want to “unravel equalities legislation in their image,” and “They have got to understand that equalities legislation protects them, and you can’t pick and choose.”
Most atheists and agnostics believe in the supernatural and the existence of forces of good and evil.
That’s the headline finding of a new study on unbelief from a research team in the UK.
Prof. Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham led the study that conducted interviews of unbelievers in six countries around the world: the U.K., the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Denmark, and China.
Most commonly accepted beliefs among atheists, and agnostics, the report states, are the sentiment that there are ‘underlying forces’ of good and evil; that ‘there exists a universal spirit or life force’; and ‘most significant life events are meant to be and happen for a reason.’
Unbelief in God, they write, doesn’t necessarily entail unbelief in other supernatural phenomena, and only minorities of atheists or agnostics in each of the countries appear to be thoroughgoing naturalists.
Another common supposition – that of the purposeless unbeliever, lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to the universe – also does not stand up to scrutiny, they write. The idea that the universe is ‘ultimately meaningless’ remains a minority view among unbelievers in all six countries.
Moreover, they write, with only a few exceptions, atheists and agnostics endorse the realities of objective moral values, human dignity and attendant rights, and the ‘deep value’ of nature, at similar rates to the general populations in their countries.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide has condemned the continuing human rights abuses in China in a statement on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre.
While vigils and events are being held in Hong Kong, London, Washington DC and other cities around the world to mark the violent suppression of peaceful protests in June 1989, CSW said they are dismayed by the current human rights situation.
“Under President Xi Jinping there has been a pattern of increasing human rights abuses: a stranglehold over civil society; a heightened sensitivity to perceived challenges to Party rule; and the introduction of legislation that curtails civil and political rights in the name of national security”. They added: “There has also been a rapid and alarming decrease in freedom of religion or belief, marked by the closure of thousands of temples, churches and mosques, the detention and disappearance of religious leaders, and the stripping away of religious symbols and signs. An attack, as one pastor put it, on the soul”.
