A multi-denominational Steering Group has agreed a united response in favour of retaining the 8th Amendment, “Is God for the 8th?”. 120 leaders have now added their names to the agreed pamphlet from a broad spectrum of Churches across Ireland. They include 48 Catholic Clergy and Lay leaders, 16 COI clergy and lay leaders, 15 Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist leaders, 39 Pentecostal leaders and 2 Messianic Jews. This includes Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford and leaders of the main African Church and Pentecostal network in Ireland.
The leaflet gives “God’s perspective on the unborn child”. Referring to Genesis, where it says man and woman were made “in the image of God”, it continues: “Only human life has been designed by God to possess His image. From the moment of fertilisation the human embryo is a member of a distinct species, ‘a human being’ rather than any other kind of being. Nobody because of race, sex, physical or mental disability, fails to bear the image of God. There is no ‘quality control’ system in operation before or after birth.”
The leaflet calls for “Responsible Christian Action” – to vote No in the referendum, to pray to God for guidance on how to help women in “challenging pregnancies and possibly unwanted children”, not to judge anyone, be prepared to engage in debate, to financially support “counselling, adoption and caring services”, to pray for politicians and to write to papers.
The leaflet concludes: “We stand at a crossroads for good or for evil. The Eighth Amendment is the last bulwark against abortion in Ireland, recognising the equal right to life for both mother and unborn child. It also represents a forward-thinking approach to human rights which, we hope, will one day be adopted by other nations. Let’s hold fast to this and do what is right.”
The leaflet can be downloaded from this link.
A former chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Prof Eamon McGuinness, has vigorously defended the medical safety of Ireland’s pro-life laws. Writing in the Irish Times, Prof. McGuinness said a sustained campaign has been waged by some people, including several of his colleagues in obstetrics and gynaecology, to suggest that the Eighth Amendment put women’s lives at risk.
However, he said the Eighth Amendment has one medical effect only: it prevents Irish doctors from deliberately, as an elective matter, causing the death of an unborn child. “It does not restrict doctors from acting to save the life of a woman where a serious complication arises” and, in fact, Medical Council guidelines “oblige doctors to act, even if that means the baby’s life may be lost”.
He said spurious claims are being made about medical practice in Ireland such as that a woman who has cancer while pregnant cannot avail of chemotherapy in Ireland. “This is simply false, and it appals me that such a claim would ever be made about our health service”, he said.
“From where I am seated, it has been very disturbing to see what amounts to a campaign of fear and misinformation deployed to tarnish the image of Irish medicine and make Irish women fearful of the treatment they might receive”.
He concluded: “Terminations required to save a woman’s life are legal in Ireland. They have been legal since 1983. The amendment does not inhibit our ability to treat a woman. It does one thing only – it bans us from intentionally killing one of our patients. I shall vote to retain it”.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland have launched a ferocious broadside against the Minister for Education’s recent circular that schools must provide alternative classes to students who opt-out of religion.
TUI General Secretary John MacGabhann described the policy, which had arrived “out of the blue yonder” without any consultation, as extraordinary, ham-fisted, poorly thought out, badly worded, premature and lacking in resources. He also criticised an apparent inequality in its implementation as it would only apply to ETB schools and community colleges, but not to other schools.
A new sex education Bill proposed by Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger TD seeks to remove religious ethos from the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum entirely, even in religious schools, and require the curriculum to be delivered “factually and objectively”. At the launch of the Bill in Dublin on Wednesday representatives of the Rape Crisis Network, the National Women’s Council, the Irish Family Planning Association and LGBTQI+ advocacy group ShoutOut called for the removal of “religious ethos” from the teaching of relationships and sexuality education in schools. The launch was also attended by representatives of of Atheist Ireland and UCD Students Union. Ms Coppinger said her Bill would require the religious and sexuality education curriculum to be separated and sex education ‘delivered factually’ to cover contraception, sexuality, gender, LGBTQI+ issues and consent.
The bill received pushback from some unlikely quarters with The Times , Ireland, journalist Sarah Carey responding to the National Women’s Council’s endorsement of the bill by saying she finds it “odd to see people complaining, that saying in school, that sex best practiced in loving relationship is a bad thing, when it’s pretty clear that hypersexualisation masquerading as liberation is clearly not serving young women very well”. She continued: “If we’ve a generation of women who seem to have no confidence in their right to say NO – who live under expectation & pressure that they MUST have sex, why is the ONLY source of positivity around relationship based sex being attacked? By feminists!”
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland is expected to refuse to comply with a directive from the Minister for Education to provide alternative classes to pupils who opt out of religious instruction in ETB schools and community colleges. The union is concerned that no additional resources have been provided to schools to cope with implementing the directive and will vote on whether to cooperate with it at their annual meeting this week.
TUI president Joanne Irwin said the circular had “come out of nowhere” and offered no additional resourcing for its implementation. Addressing Minister for Education Richard Bruton after his speech at the conference on Wednesday she said: “You are expecting schools to offer ‘alternative tuition’ – meaning subjects – to students at the time that religion instruction takes place. How can this be done? Have you even considered the implication this will have for the provision of the 400 hours wellbeing as part of Junior Cycle Reform? Minister, we would have brought all these concerns to you if you or your Department consulted with us. Why, Minister, are you singling out some schools and not others?
The planned revision of the school sex education programme announced by Education Minister, Richard Bruton, must accord with the wishes of parents, Iona Institute Director, David Quinn, has said. Speaking to The Irish Times he stated that the Institute had “no objection in principle [to consent being taught in schools], always keeping in mind that parents are the primary educators, with the schools as back-up.” He hoped that “as well as being taught what proper consent is, the children would also learn to get to know and like each other properly first”. At primary level, he said he would hope this would not be before sixth class and that it would be taught in an age appropriate way. He also said “the ethos of the school has to be taken into account”.
Minister Bruton has asked policymakers to review the 20-year-old curriculum on relationships and sexuality education (RSE) to ensure it meets the needs of young people in Ireland today with a special emphasis on information on sexual consent at both primary and secondary level. In addition, he wants topics such as safe use of the internet, the effect of social media on relationships and LGBT issues to be included in sexual education classes at both primary and secondary level.
Speaking on RTE’s Sean O’Rourke show, Minister Bruton said that the challenges young people face have changed dramatically since the RSE programme was first put in place, “for example, we voted for marriage equality, we have changed the definition of consent”. He continued: “I am asking specifically that some issues would be looked at, issues such as consent, the role of social media and internet use, the role of LGBTQ+ matters which have clearly become much more prominent”.
Parents and students are to be consulted on whether smartphones should be allowed in schools. The use of smartphones and tablet devices among young people has been a source of rising concern, with some campaigners calling for an outright ban. Minister for Education Richard Bruton is to issue a circular to all schools shortly asking them to decide whether smartphone or tablet devices should be permitted and, if so, in what circumstances. The Minister’s position stands in stark contrast to Government policy on the age of digital consent for social media accounts. The EU allows member States to set the age anywhere between 13 and 16. While countries such as France and Germany have set it at the maximum possible, Ireland have decided to set it at the minimum possible, precisely because they thought a child’s welfare might require the child having access to social media despite the objections of their parents.
‘We are Family’ has been chosen as the theme for Dublin’s LGBTQ Pride festival in June. The decision was taken by organisers in response to what they called “the exclusion of representation of LGBTQ+ families in literature” for the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August, which will be attended by Pope Francis.
The liberal Catholic We Are Church group has called for LGBTQ+ families to be granted “a place of honour” at the Meeting “to dispel the implied rejection of LBGTQ + families from this Catholic event”.
A Fine Gael senator took to social media Easter Sunday to complain that a priest at Knock Shrine brought up the topic of abortion during a homily at Mass on Easter Sunday. Senator Catherine Noone, who chaired the Oireachtas Committee on Abortion, tweeted her six thousand followers: “Easter Mass in Knock Basilica this afternoon with my parents – an octogenarian priest took at least three opportunities to preach to us about abortion – it’s no wonder people feel disillusioned with the Catholic Church.”
Pro-life groups and members of the faithful pushed back hard against the Senator. The Save The 8th campaign called for Ms Noone to withdraw the comment, claiming it was “embarrassing and wrong”.
“Yes campaigners are allowed to engage in open ageism against our senior citizens,” a spokesman said.
“This is a running theme in the Yes campaign – that old people, who are more likely in their view to vote No, are consistently denigrated,” he added.
Two key moves to restrict denominational education in Ireland will be made by the Government within weeks. Plans by Education Minister Richard Bruton to remove the so-called ‘baptism barrier’, whereby schools may give preference in admissions to pupils of their own faith community in the event of overcrowding, are at an advanced stage. So too are moves to survey parents as to who should run their local Catholic primaries; a first step to actually transferring those schools to non-denominational patrons. According to Katherine Donnelly of the Irish Independent, the twin initiatives represent a “head-on challenge to the foundations of Catholic education,” and comes in the midst of the abortion referendum campaign and while the Church is busy making preparations for the visit by Pope Francis in August.
