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.

Minister for Health Simon Harris has called for a referendum to change the definition of family in the Constitution so as to remove the special status of marriage. He said that it is an area that needs careful consideration and work, but added that “the idea that a mum or dad bringing up a son or daughter, or a grandmother bringing up three or four grandkids for years, effectively raising them, are not recognised as families because of our Constitution’s outdated understanding of what constitutes a family is something that we should examine.”

It means the Government has is moving even further away from the idea that the biological family of mother, father and child based on marriage is of special importance.

Mr Harris was speaking in the Seanad on a revised Children and Family Relationships (Amendment) Bill which corrects drafting errors in legislation from three years ago. That legislation was meant to declare that a child’s real parents are those who intend to raise it, rather than those who are genetically related to it.

Speaking on the new bill, Independent Senator Ronan Mullen said “the child’s best interests are supposed to be paramount, but time and again we see that they only come into it after adults’ aspirations have been facilitated by politicians”.

There was, he said, a “complete absence of debate about the morality of many of these modern techniques designed to secure and procure children for adults to bring up and the herd-like rush to a right-on, politically correct, slavish obedience to a new set of moral norms”.

Doctors who supported Health Minister Simon Harris in his campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment are angry at Government threats to force them to accept a set fee to provide abortions, reports the Irish Independent. A leaked Cabinet memo said GPs may demand substantial fees for the service and exploit Government promises to have a service in place by January. Doctors for Choice, which provided strong support for the Minister during the referendum campaign, warned the delivery of the service would have to be properly resourced. They warned that if GPs are not given a three-figure negotiated fee to cover two to three visits, doctors may be pushed to say no to participating in providing the service. They also questioned whether the minister was trying to pitch the public against GPs.

Criminal investigations have been launched into four cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands after a sharp rise in the number of doctor-assisted deaths, reports the Guardian newspaper. The cases follow the opening of a criminal inquiry last year into the euthanasia of a 74-year-old woman who was described by prosecutors as “seriously demented” and legally incapable of choosing whether to die or not.

The law in the Netherlands changed in 2002 to allow doctors to end the life, on request, of people in “unbearable suffering”, for whom there is no prospect of improvement. About 7,000 people were euthanised by doctors in 2017, according to official records, up from 4,188 five years ago. Despite this rise in numbers, there is yet to be a single prosecution of a doctor involved but concerns have been raised that assisted death is becoming normalised.

The four cases being investigated have been referred to the prosecutor’s office by regional euthanasia committees and alleged they had found problems. The cases were then found to warrant criminal investigation.