A surrogate mother in the UK lost custody of the child she gave birth to and raised for 18 months with her husband when a Court ordered it be handed over to a gay couple who had contracted the surrogacy. In 2015, the woman signed a surrogacy agreement with the male couple, whom she had met online, and traveled to Cyprus to have an embryo transferred to her womb. During her pregnancy however, the woman and her husband fell out with the gay couple and changed their mind about giving up the child.  Genetically, the child was conceived using sperm from one of the men of the gay couple and a donor egg from a Spanish woman. The male couple then began legal proceedings against the surrogate family and the Courts decided that, while the surrogate mother and her husband were the legal parents of the child, nonetheless the child should be handed over to the “intended parents” who had contracted the surrogacy as the baby’s “identity needs as a child of gay intended parents would be best met by living with a genetic parent”. The surrogate couple appealed the decision and last Friday an Appeals Court confirmed the original ruling that the child had to be handed over to the contracting, male couple.

A court in France has ruled that Christmas nativity scenes cannot be displayed in public buildings unless they are installed exclusively for cultural, artistic or festive purposes.

The ruling by the French Council of State relates to a Nativity scene installed in the Town Hall in Béziers in 2014 by its Mayor, Robert Ménard, against which a complaint had been filed for alleged violation of the country’s secularization laws. However, the Mayor has refused to back down and plans to continue displaying the nativity scene though with modifications to reflect local regional customs.

Sinn Féin has adopted a UK style position in favour of virtually unrestricted abortion and also denied its members a conscience vote on the issue. The new stance was adopted at its Ard Fheis at the weekend and it represents a radical turnaround for the party from even one week ago. The party’s stance had been to support abortion only in cases of rape and serious foetal impairment and this policy was meant to be reaffirmed at the party’s Ard Fheis this year. Speaking two weeks ago, party leader Gerry Adams said that while he personally believes in a woman’s right to choose, he said he would support the party’s line on abortion as the policy was “worked out over a very, very long time, … [and] reflects wider society.” At the end of last week however, it was announced that the Ard Comhairle would propose a change to its policy, adding support for abortion “where a woman’s life, health or mental health is at serious risk or in grave danger”. But then, when the motion was debated at the Ard Fheis on Saturday, it was amended to drop the qualifier “serious risk or in grave danger” and adopted support for abortion simply when the mother’s health, including mental health, is at risk, making it indistinguishable from the present UK abortion law. In a further motion, the party also decided that members should not be allowed a conscience vote on the issue. The party also reaffirmed its previous support for repealing the Eighth Amendment. Unlike other party conferences, motions passed by the Ard Fheis become official party policy.

The Houses of Parliament in Westminster will be lit up in red this Wednesday in honour of the world’s persecuted Christians and all those who suffer for peacefully held beliefs. Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need and Christian Solidarity Worldwide are organising the event, called #Red Wednesday, at locations all over the UK. A spokesperson for Aid to the Church in Need said “Red is the Christian colour of martyrdom. Christians are the most persecuted faith group in today’s world and #RedWednesday will honour all Christians who suffer and die for their faithfulness to Christ’s message of peace and love”. He added: “#RedWednesday will shine a light on Christian persecution but also highlight the injustices perpetrated against other faith groups. Our campaign calls for respect and tolerance for people of faith and between different faith traditions.” So far this year, at least 10 cathedrals across the UK have pledged to go red including London’s Westminster Cathedral and others in Ayr, Edinburgh, Paisley, Birmingham, Norwich, Wrexham, Derry and Armagh. In total, nearly 50 public buildings are expected to get behind #RedWednesday – schools, colleges and churches including London’s Anglican St Martin-in-the-Fields and All Souls, Langham Place.

There will be a week of vigils and other events across the country from November 19 to 26. At 6pm on November 22 a solidarity service will take place outside Westminster Cathedral, with talks, witness testimonies, a video message by MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, music and speeches by Coptic Orthodox Bishop Angaelos, Neville Kyrke-Smith, national director of Aid to the Church in Need (UK), and Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Throughout the day, a traditional London red bus emblazoned with #RedWednesday slogans will be criss-crossing the capital, stopping at London landmarks.

The Church will never change its teaching on issues of life and marriage, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin has said. Speaking at Saint Mary’s Church, Haddington Road, on where the Church will be in ten years time, Archbishop Martin said “Let me be very clear.  The Church will never change its teaching on marriage and on the right to life. The Church will never compromise in its teaching on marriage and the right to life.” Acknowledging that such a stance puts the Church at odds with contemporary culture regarding abortion and same-sex marriage, he said that a Christian involves being open to hostility and even to martyrdom, although Christians here are more likely to suffer marginalization rather than martyrdom.  Nonetheless, he said, marginalization should not lead Christians to fly from reality into a comfort zone and the safety of the likeminded.

Some of the most prominent groups campaigning for Repeal of the Eighth Amendment are dodging SIPO rules on foreign and domestic donations by claiming they are not engaged in political campaigning. The Standards in Public Office law requires any body which received a political donation of over €100 to register as a ‘third party’ and bans foreign donations outright. But, the head of ethics and lobbying regulation Sherry Perreault told the Sunday Business Post that it was sometimes difficult to say whether a donation to an organisation was intended for political activity. “This is a recommendation that the commission has made in every annual report for the last couple of years – to look again at what constitutes a third party. These are things for government to consider in due course,” she said. Yet, a Department of Housing spokesman said there were “no immediate plans” to make any such changes. The most prominent groups campaigning for repeal of the Eight Amendment are not registered with SIPO right now. Amnesty International, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the Irish Family Planning Association have said they will register as third parties with SIPO if they decide to campaign in the forthcoming referendum while the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment said it had commenced the required process to register as a third party. On the pro-life side, the most prominent groups, the Pro-Life Campaign, the Iona Institute and Family and Life are registered with SIPO, while some smaller groups such as the Second Look project and Yes to Life Ireland are not.

The Pro Life Campaign has said yesterday’s session at the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment descended to a new level of farce when representatives of the Irish Family Planning Association were invited to address committee members as “independent experts”. PLC spokesperson Cora Sherlock said the IFPA are neither experts in women’s health nor independent witnesses. As evidence of their “expertise”, she said in recent years, IFPA counselors advised women to lie to their doctors and say they had a miscarriage if medical complications arose after an abortion, advice that the then master of a Dublin maternity hospital described as “life-endangering”. The IFPA also coached women on how to illegally import abortion pills to self-administer without medical supervision. Ms Sherlock said such “very serious breaches of care are on the public record and are the actions of a rogue agency, not the practice of an organisation delivering genuine care to women.” She added that they could not be regarded as “Independent” when they are in receipt of funding from the largest abortion provider in the US, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and from the New York abortion lobby group, the Centre for Reproductive Rights. This is despite the fact that the chairperson of the Oireachtas committee, Senator Catherine Noone assured the public just a week ago that no advocacy groups would be invited as witnesses.

She continued: “Now that the vote not to retain the 8th Amendment has taken place, there is no point in pro-life groups attending the committee. As the committee clocks up yet another week of slanted testimony in favour of repeal from a long-standing pro-abortion campaigning organisation like the IFPA, its credibility is even more damaged. Thankfully the public are starting to see through the charade that’s going on.”

In a tweet the PLC summed up the unfolding farce as follows: “First, they invite 24 abortion advocates, just 4 pro-life. Then they vote for abortion after hearing from less than a third of their witnesses. Then they scramble to invite pro-life experts and attack them for not co-operating.  #8Committee credibility is in tatters @senatornoone”.

A Government official has decided a Catholic primary school in London must remove the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from its admissions application form lest they be seen as restricting the definition of ‘parent’. Peter Goringe, an official at the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, which settles admissions disputes on behalf of the government, made the ruling after a complaint by one person against the school who said the terms discriminated against “separated, step and gay parents”. The complaint was upheld despite the school having the backing of the local authority, Wandsworth Borough Council, on the matter. The adjudicator wrote in his report that “in the absence of any clarification of the term ‘parent’, the use of the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ might, as the objector suggests, be taken to imply that the school is restricting its definition [of parent].”

In a further surprising move, the Catholic Education Service has said that it will be asking all Catholic schools to comply with a “unified approach” under which admissions forms would omit the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’. A spokesman said: “We expect all Catholic schools to comply with the school admissions code and we work closely with dioceses and the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) to ensure this happens.”

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, was scathing in his response. He told the Sunday Times: “To ensure fairness, we should not be placing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ on a list of forbidden words. We should, instead, be accommodating these cherished foundation stones of our civilisation within the admissions system. The decision to remove them is profoundly undemocratic and illiberal and is a capitulation to a form of politically correct fascism.”

The Archbishop of Dublin has said that Christians owe absolute allegiance to God alone, and not to any State or political regime. Speaking yesterday at an ordination ceremony at the Pro-Catherdral of two deacons to the priesthood, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the early Christian martyrs’ witness to love showed “they could live in any regime but they could never grant any State or regime absolute allegiance” as their love could never restrict them to being “unquestionably loyal just to a regime or in some way to treat Caesar as God”. Likewise today, that same absolute allegiance to God precludes “the many compromising allegiances within which lives can become trapped”, whether they be consumerism, human success, popularity, wealth or power.  Speaking to the Deacons directly, he said, “Your commitment to poverty, chastity and obedience is not an allegiance of restriction, but an allegiance to be free to love as God loves and will only be authentic if founded in love.”   At the same time, he cautioned that such a ministry of witnessing to the love of Jesus would inevitably at times “upset your human sensitivity, comfort, and security2, before adding: “Never allow human upset to impede your love of Jesus.”