An investigation by an election watchdog against Amnesty Ireland’s receipt of a massive foreign donation to campaign for an abortion referendum was ‘procedurally flawed’, the High Court was told yesterday. The investigation was conducted by the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) last year and they had concluded it by ordering Amnesty to pay back the monies to the American billionaire donor, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Amnesty, however, argued that the money was not used for its referendum campaign for repeal of the Eighth Amendment as the referendum had not yet been called at the time the donation was made. When OSF denied last December that it told SIPO the grant was for ‘political purposes’, nonetheless they said: “The grant in question was to fund the continuation of Amnesty’s ‘My body My Rights’ campaign, which seeks to mobilise support for a repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution. . .”

A letter read in court by counsel for Sipo Tuesday said: “Following careful consideration of the complaints made by your client, the Commission has concluded that the process leading to the adoption of the decision communicated in a letter of 17 November 2017 was procedurally flawed” and “considers it appropriate” to consent to the Court’s order to quash the original decision.

The letter also addressed a press release issued by Sipo in December 2017, which Amnesty had raised in its action. Contradicting the Commission’s previous claims, the letter says: “The Commission confirms that at no point did the OSF (Open Society Foundation) advise the Commission that the donation was for political purposes within the meaning of the Electoral Act 1997.”

Sipo also agreed to make a contribution to Amnesty’s legal costs.

The UK Supreme Court has decided that patients with permanent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) can now be effectively starved and dehydrated to death if the medical staff and relatives agree that this is in their ‘best interests’.

People with PVS (awake but not aware) and MCS (awake but only intermittently or partially aware) can breathe without ventilators but need to have food and fluids by tube (CANH).

These patients are not imminently dying and with good care can live for many years. Some even regain awareness. But if tubal feeding is withdrawn, then they will die from dehydration and starvation within two or three weeks.

Until last year all cases of PVS and MCS have had to go to the Court of Protection before CANH could be withdrawn. Under the old rules, only about 100 applications to stop tube feeding have been made in more than 20 years, since the Tony Bland case created the precedent in 1993. But this could now hugely increase.

In two cases last year (known as M and Y) the High Court ruled that if the relatives and medical staff agreed that withdrawal of CANH was in the patient’s ‘best interests’ then the court need not be involved. The Official Solicitor appealed this decision to the Supreme Court in a hearing in February. The Supreme Court issued its judgement Monday effectively upholding the decision of the High Court.

One of the UK’s most famous divorce lawyers has urged schools to help young people prepare for marriage.

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia wants schools to help pupils view marriage as “the most important decision they make”. She said it must be understood not simply as romance, but as the context for bearing and raising children: “It’s a practical arrangement . . . which has to survive to rear children.”

She added: “It’s the children who are the very sad losers when parents are selfish and decide their own desires override those of their family.”

To avoid the “untold grief” of separations, she hoped that research on the best marriages would be introduced in schools, and that they would devote “just a little time to get students to focus on what is the most important decision they make, which is basically who they breed with”.

A Canadian man legally changed his gender to female so he could take advantage of better car insurance rates offered to women and save up nearly $1,100 Canadian Dollars, a report said. The man told Canadian Broadcaster, CBC News, that he was given a quote of $4,500 Canadian Dollars but was told his yearly bill would be around $1,100 less if he was a woman. Men under the age of 25 pay higher rates as insurers deem them a higher risk than women of the same age.

“I was pretty angry about that and I didn’t feel like getting screwed over any more,” the man said, adding that he asked the insurers to change his gender on the insurance policy but they refused.

To take advantage of the lower rates and “beat the system”, David had to legally change his gender on a birth certificate. To do so, he had to acquire a note from the doctor acknowledging his identification as a woman before he could proceed with the change.

“It was pretty simple. I just basically asked for it and told them that I identify as a woman, or I’d like to identify as a woman, and he wrote me the letter I wanted.”

Just weeks after submitting all the documentation, David was legally a female and subject to lower premium rates for the insurance. “I was quite shocked, but I was also relieved,” he said. “I felt like I beat the system. I felt like I won.”

He fully recognises the absurdity of the situation. “I’m a man, 100 percent. Legally, I’m a woman,” he said, noting that he will be saving around $91 Canadian Dollars per month. “I did it for cheaper car insurance.”

Christians should subvert the closed shop of the modern world with the unbounded generosity of God, the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary has said. Speaking to pilgrims on Croagh Patrick for the annual Reek Sunday climb, he said that many feel they are strangers in a strange land, but pilgrimages, “provide an opportunity to take stock but also a time to discover new heart.”

He said that just as in the Roman Empire, the Church is again small, peripheral, suspect and despised, and it faces a brilliant, glittering and self-assured civilisation. However, that civilisation is consumed by short and medium-term goals where in politics, business, entertainment and sport careers are made, unmade or simply just die unnoticed, all at a tremendous pace. Even the educational system, he said, “makes fewer and fewer bones about the socio-economic goals of learning and there is less and less value placed on knowledge for its own sake and wisdom as an end in education.”

To counter this, he said the Church must go to whatever avenues remain open to it.

“Just as once we were consulted and heard in the most powerful circles, now we must get used to preaching on street corners and making the Gospel heard over the incessant hubbub of the public square,” he said.

“If we have one mission it is surely to subvert the closed shop that is the modern, western world view and to startle that careful, calculating world with the unaccounting largesse, the generosity, the hospitality of God.”

According to a report by Rwanda’s pro-government KT Press, more than 8,000 churches have been closed by the Government for failing to meet strict new requirements laid down at the beginning of the year. Many see the closures as part of an effort by the government to assert an aggressive secular stance.

Rwandans’ right to religious freedom is granted under article 37 of the 2003 constitution, which was amended in 2015. However, there has been a marked increase in secularism in the government: They no longer allow prayer meetings in government institutions, which used to be very common. Words referring to the Christian faith have been removed from the preamble of the Constitution. During the commemoration of the genocide, neither pastors nor priests (who used to play a prominent role in past commemoration events), can speak or preach any more, unless the event is organised by a church.

There is a high level of fear among church leaders. Shortly after the new requirements began to be implemented, officials arrested six pastors accused of plotting to defy the government orders. Although the pastors have since been released, a senior church leader explained that the arrest served as a stern warning to others to not resist the move.

As many as 2,000 performers, including a 1,000-strong choir, are to take part in the two-hour Festival of Families at Croke Park in Dublin on August 25th, which will be attended by Pope Francis. Among the Irish and international artists taking part are Nathan Carter, Daniel O’Donnell, the Riverdance Troupe, Celine Byrne, Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains, Moya Brennan of Clannad, and the Priests trio.

Ruán Magan, creative director with Tyrone Productions, which is staging the event, said the pope had “very much asked to sit among the people. He didn’t want to be on the stage.” Instead, the pope will instead sit among those attending on the pitch but on a platform “about 2ft high so people can still see him.

Between 75,000 and 77,000 people are expected to attend the event, with Croke Park’s capacity reduced from more than 82,000 to make room for staging. All tickets for the event are gone but it will be broadcast live on RTÉ2 television as well as on radio.

World Meeting of Families 2018 secretary general Fr Timothy Bartlett said that, as part of the programme, “five families from across the world are chosen to present to the Holy Father the realities, the joys the challenges of family life today”. The families concerned would be from India, Burkino Faso, Ireland, Canada and Iraq. “Pope Francis will address everybody before he departs,” Fr Bartlett said.

The Republic of Ireland is the least Christian part of the English-speaking world and a place where “God is now seen as redundant and unnecessary”, a prominent Church of Ireland rector has said.

In an interview with an evangelical Australian newspaper, Rev Trevor Johnston said  “there is significant overall decline in the denominations on the island, but the Church of Ireland in the South is feeling this most acutely. The age profile is old, the reach is small and the major urban centres lack any kind of strong ministry”.

The Republic “has now come of age as a western European nation, rejoicing in having thrown off the shackles of its Roman Catholic heritage. We saw this clearly in the referendums on abortion (2018) and same-gender marriage (2015). For the southern Irish, God is now seen as redundant and unnecessary,” he said.

There were “significant swathes of the Church of Ireland that are revisionist in their approach to the questions of human sexuality. The official teaching of the church remains that marriage is between one man and one woman but there are many (bishops, clergy and laity) who are trying to change this teaching and in 2017 a motion, defeated by about 10-15 per cent, sought to push against this traditional teaching,” he said.

Catholics bishops have called on the Minister for Education to withdraw a directive which mandates that students who opt out of religion classes in State-run secondary schools must be timetabled for other subjects.

In correspondence with Richard Bruton, they have warned that students who study religion will suffer an unfair disadvantage in comparison with their peers who don’t, who will instead receive extra tuition in examinable subjects, such as maths, Irish or English: “While we are respectful of the wishes of those who opt out of religious education … we are equally clear that those who continue to take religious education should not be disadvantaged …”

The bishops have proposed that students who opt out of religious instruction should instead be offered a course in “religious heritage and values as well as ethics”.

The bishops also say the Minister’s circular overlooked the fact that religious education being taught in ETB schools is “not religious indoctrination” but a syllabus devised by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), an agency of the Department of Education.