‘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.
The two most senior Church of Ireland leaders yesterday re-affirmed their opposition to unrestricted access to abortion, and called the proposal to repeal the Eighth Amendment a “stark decision” as the Government have now confirmed that unrestricted access to abortion, for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, would follow upon repeal of the amendment.
The Most Revd Dr Richard Clarke, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, and The Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland said they had previously expressed concern that the referendum was being understood as something like an opinion poll on abortion. “However, now that the Government has made known the general scheme of a Bill which it would introduce should the referendum on the repeal of Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland be passed, voters face a stark decision.” While they said the present amendment was not entirely satisfactory, and might need some modification, “what is now being proposed by the Government – if the Article is repealed – is unrestricted access to abortion up to twelve weeks of pregnancy”.
They continued: “unrestricted access to abortion in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, or indeed at any stage, is not an ethical position we can accept. There is, for Christians, a very clear witness in the Scriptures that all human life, including before physical birth, has a sacred dignity in the eyes of God”. They concluded: “We therefore ask Church members to think through the issues involved carefully and with prayer over these coming weeks.”
The referendum on repeal of the 8th Amendment is set to take place on Friday, May 25th. Minister for Health Simon Harris and Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy made the formal announcement at a press conference yesterday. It came after the bill to hold a referendum passed all stages of the Seanad, after having previously pssed the Dail. That cleared the way for the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy, to set the date for the referendum. Polling will be from 7am to 10pm and Minister Murphy has asked people to check that their names are on the register. He said that if people have a postal vote, that will close on 28 April and if you are entitled to vote in the normal way the supplementary register will close on 8 May. Mr Murphy asked people to make sure they are registered at checktheregister.ie and “go out and use your vote on Friday, May 25th.”
The Minister for Health, Simon Harris, issued a terse denial of Simon Coveney’s face-saving claims to having won restrictions to the Government’s proposed abortion regime. After the debacle of his legislative “two-thirds majority lock” proposal was declared unconstitutional by the Attorney General, the Cabinet, in an attempt to avoid further public criticism of Minister Coveney, agreed an unspecified measure whereby abortion laws would go through a process “above and beyond” the normal legislative scrutiny. According to Sarah Bardon of the Irish Times though, “Nobody is quite sure what that means”.
Minister Coveney yesterday spoke to The Irish Times and said his support for the Government’s proposals was “conditional” and told Newstalk of his expectation that women in the latter stages of pregnancy would require a scan, to determine the age of the unborn child, before a termination can be procured. Both statements were rejected by Minister for Health Simon Harris at a press conference yesterday, who added that he did not intend to spend the next eight weeks of the campaign answering “the same question about individual politicians”.
The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said the Government will urge the Church to celebrate all families, including same-sex headed families, during the upcoming visit of Pope Francis to Dublin for the World Meeting of Families.
He was responding to questions from Fianna Fáil TD, Robert Troy, who said he was concerned the Catholic Church might only welcome “traditional families”. Deputy Troy noted that originally the Church produced “pamphlets and booklets demonstrating more than the traditional Irish family”, but since then, “they’ve moved away from welcoming the non-traditional Irish family”. He added: “given the fact that it was, as a country, one of the first to have a referendum to establish marriage equality in the gay community, I think that is regrettable”.
Mr Varadkar said the Government is very much of the view that all the many different types of families should be celebrated, including the traditional nuclear family with the man married to the woman with children, “but also one-parent families, families led by grandparents, and families led by same-sex couples”. He promised that the State would “make it known in our meetings with the organisers that in line with our commitment to personal liberty and equality before the law, the Government’s view is that families in all their forms should be celebrated”.
While noting a commitment to freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, the Taoiseach said the Government would express its view, but promised, “we will not try to impose it on a religious body”.
The bill to hold an abortion referendum to repeal the 8th amendment passed the Seanad last night, and the proposed abortion legislation that would follow it was approved by the Cabinet. At the same time, Tánaiste Simon Coveney endured withering criticism of his proposal to restrict future legislative changes on abortion law after the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, shot down his proposal in the Dail as unconstitutional. Minister for Health Simon Harris threw a sop to the Tánaiste by promising he would review with the Attorney General ways of making future changes to abortion law legislatively difficult without apply any extra-constitutional lock to legislation. Mr Coveney had already endured some torrid criticism from pro-life groups for a sudden u-turn on his support for unrestricted abortion prior to 12 weeks gestation. They addded to that criticism yesterday after the shambles of him “demanding” the legislative lock, only to see it “in tatters” within hours of making it.
A bill to redefine marriage in Northern Ireland so as to enable same-sex couples to marry passed its first hurdle in the House of Lords on Tuesday, as an identical bill is to be introduced in the House of Commons, today, Wednesday.
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who will co-sponsor the bill in the House of Commons said: “I’d much rather that this decision was taken by local politicians in Belfast, but given that it doesn’t seem the Assembly will be up and running again soon, I believe that Westminster MPs are right to change the law to provide marriage equality for everyone. It is a real honour and a privilege to be sponsoring this legislation. I hope that all parties will now support it and make sure it becomes law as quickly as possible so that everyone, in all parts of the United Kingdom, no matter where they live or who they love, can get married”.
Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley said last month that Conservative MPs would have a free vote on the bill. Nonetheless, the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson predicted that the legislation was unlikely to get through all the stages of the parliamentary process.
