The involvement of fathers in parenting their children has been lauded by the Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty. She was speaking at the launch of a new parental-leave benefits program whereby the parents of new borns will each receive up to seven weeks paid leave. The Minister whose department will oversee the implementation of the new scheme, said the Government is particularly conscious that fathers need more time with their children.
“The evidence shows that when fathers take a more significant and meaningful share in the parenting of their children, the individual family benefits, and so does wider society,” she said. In the marriage referendum, the Government said the sex of the parents raising a child doesn’t matter.
Having more parents stay at home for longer will also help the Government alleviate the looming crisis in childcare, she added.
Up to 1.5 million people in America now identify as Wicca or Pagan according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. That means there are now more witches in the US than there are Presbyterians who have around 1.4 million adherents.
Experts believe that the explosion in the witch population is due to millennial women’s embracing of new-age spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.
Commenting on the research, Times, Ireland edition, columnist Lise Hand said there should be no surprise that so many Catholic women should abandon the Church for witchcraft as the Church has shown “zero tolerance for women deemed to be outside societal lines, unmarried mothers in particular.” She added: “The only shocker about this witchy upswing is that it has taken so long.”
She added: “A Wicca party could be just the thing for Ireland.”
A type of “martyrdom” takes place in democracies when religious freedom is unjustly restricted, Pope Francis has said in an audience with a group which assists the Church in the Holy Land.
“In front of the whole world – which too often turns its gaze and looks away – is the dramatic situation of Christians who are persecuted and killed in ever-increasing numbers,” the pope said last Friday in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
“In addition to their martyrdom in blood,” he said, “there is also a ‘white martyrdom,’ such as that which occurs in democratic countries when freedom of religion is restricted. And this is a daily white martyrdom of the Church in those places.”
Pope Francis spoke with around 130 members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem on the final day of their Nov. 13-16 General Assembly in Rome. The knighthood order provides financial support to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
The State should not take over the direct operation of health services currently run by voluntary hospitals and agencies, but there should be significant changes to existing funding arrangements, a new Government review is expected to recommend.
The review, commissioned last year by Minister for Health Simon Harris, was asked to examine the role played by voluntary organisations in health provision and personal social services in Ireland; to consider current and potential issues arising; and to make recommendations to the Minister for Health on the future relationship between the State and voluntary service providers. It was commissioned in response to the outcry over the National Maternity Hospital being moved to the voluntary Catholic Hospital, St Vincents, which was once run by the Sisters of Charity. Besides a distaste among some with public money going to a nominally religious body, there were also fears that abortion might be restricted in the new maternity hospital.
At least 42 people have died in an attack last week on the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Alindao, in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to local reports. At least one priest was among those killed in the attack. Some unofficial estimates have said the death toll could reach as high as 100. Many of the people killed were refugees sheltering at the Church. The CAR has suffered violence since December 2012, when several bands of mainly Muslim rebel groups formed an alliance, taking the name Seleka, and seized power while other groups, called Anti-Balaka, have formed to violently resist them.
According to reports from Aid to the Church in Need, ex-Seleka forces attacked the cathedral, reportedly in retaliation for a Muslim who was killed the day before by Anti-Balaka. The priest killed in the attack was vicar general of the diocese, Abbe Blaise Mada. Aid to the Church in Need added that some reports have said a second priest, Father Celestine Ngoumbango, was also killed, but this has not been confirmed. Houses in the neighborhood were also looted and burned.
Many Catholic churches in the country provide refuge to Muslims and Christians alike fleeing violence, including churches in the Diocese of Bangassou, some 140 miles to the east of Alindao, where several Catholic institutions have taken in displaced Muslims who face violence at the hand of anti-balaka.
New data shows a continued rise so far this year of people who have been diagnosed with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
According to provisional data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), there were 454 new HIV diagnoses from January to November 2018. This is an increase of 66 cases compared to the same period last year. There has been a total of 11,078 STI diagnoses overall which represents a 6% increase when compared to figures from January to November 2017.
Niall Mulligan, Executive Director of HIV Ireland told TheJournal.ie that the provisional figures for the year so far are the worst he has seen. “I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of data but it’s disconcerting that we’re almost becoming accepting of this. These figures are provisional but they do give a good indication of how things are going to be at the end of the year. So, it’s inevitable that we’re going to see 500 plus new diagnoses again this year.”
The Master of the Rotunda predicts that the hospital will conduct up to 800 abortions a year once legislation making it widely available comes into practice. Dr Fergal Malone was speaking on RTE Radio 1’s Drivetime after the hospital announced a record 100% survival rate for premature babies born as early as 28 weeks gestation. The new research was published to coincide with World Prematurity Day and presenter Mary Wilson said it ‘shines a light on the life-saving impact of certain drugs and early diagnosis marking the highest survival rate on record.’
She went on to question Dr Malone about the hospital’s readiness to conduct abortions. He said they will ‘be on the frontline’ and they expect ‘about 15 cases a week at the Rotunda, so sixty a month, seven or eight hundred a year’. He said it would be a significant, increased burden on the hospital but they have plans which they have submitted to the HSE on how they would deal with it.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee wants to define abortion and assisted suicide as a human right. The Committee outlined the position in an advanced, unedited version of a ‘general comment’ on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A “General Comment” is a UN agency’s interpretation of the provisions of the treaties to which it is a party. Nothing in any UN document mentions either abortion or assisted suicide.
The comment says that States must guarantee “safe, legal and effective” access to abortion when the life of the pregnant woman is at risk, or when carrying the pregnancy to term could cause her pain or suffering, “most notably where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or is not viable.”
The document also argues that States “may not regulate pregnancy or abortion in all other cases in a manner that runs contrary to their duty to ensure that women and girls do not have to undertake unsafe abortions, and they should revise their abortion laws accordingly.”
It calls for the decriminalisation of abortion, both for women and doctors providing them and the elimination of ‘barriers’ to access, “including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers.”
In addition, the draft comment Crux had access to also calls on States to allow medical professionals to provide treatment to “facilitate the termination of life of afflicted adults, such as those who are terminally ill, who experience severe physical or mental pain and suffering and who wish to die with dignity.”
Children whose parents remarry several times or have multiple partners are likely to have more relationships themselves when they’re adults, a new study has suggested.
An array of biological traits, as well as factors learned from parents in childhood, influence our relationship success, US researchers, lea by Dr Claire Kamp Dush, an associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State University, said. They add this has led to a “merry-go-round of partners” in some households which could be harming the wellbeing of children and their parents.
“Stable romantic unions, including marriage and cohabitation, are linked to better mental and physical health for both adults and children,” the authors wrote. The researchers said that signs of an increased break-up rate being passed down the generations could be down to a mix of heritable factors, such as personality traits or mental health conditions, and the relationship skills children see from their parents.
“What our results suggest is that mothers may pass on their marriageable characteristics and relationship skills to their children – for better or worse,” said Dr Dush. “It could be that mothers who have more partners don’t have great relationship skills, or don’t deal with conflict well, or have mental health problems, each of which can undermine relationships and lead to instability”.
A prominent moral theologian has urged doctors, nurses and other medical staff to engage in civil disobedience rather than accept being coerced into aiding and abetting abortions. Writing in the Irish Independent, Fr Vincent Twomey, said that the Government’s proposed abortion legislation includes a clause on “conscientious objection” according to which doctors whose conscience forbids them to kill a child in the womb at any stage of its development are obliged to refer the woman seeking abortion to another doctor, thereby co-operating in the abortion.
“This is repugnant to the meaning of conscience. It imposes a legal obligation that contradicts the moral obligation not to aid or abet evil. Apart from the doctor, other medical, pharmacy and ancillary hospital staff cannot be forced to co-operate in an abortion”, he wrote.
If the Government goes ahead with the proposed legislation, he said all medical and ancillary staff “must exercise civil disobedience”.
In conclusion, he quoted Seán MacBride, founding member of Amnesty International, who, upon receiving the Nobel Prize, affirmed that: “To the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one more might, with relevance, be added. It is ‘The Right to Refuse to Kill'” – and, Fr Twomey added, the right not to be forced to vote for, or otherwise co-operate in, such killing.
