A fifth Coptic Christian has been murdered in Egypt in six weeks, aggravating fears among Christians that Islamist extremists are targeting them with impunity. The series of murders has been called “the most aggressive campaign against [the Copts] in the history of modern Egypt“. Nadra Mounir, 26, was found dead in her flat in Cairo last Thursday evening (6 July), and religious icons in her home had reportedly been desecrated.  A neighbour told World Watch Monitor: “We live in peace and love with our Muslim neighbours … But after this incident, there is a state of fear and terror among all of us, and we feel that we can be targeted at any time.” Fr. Thomas Fekry, a priest at Mrs Mounir’s church, Mar Girgis, added: “The majority of people in Zarayeb Ezbet Al-Nakhl are Christians; they are simple people who work collecting rubbish. I think that slaughtering Nadra was a message, to intimidate and terrorise the Christians in the area.”

A Sinn Fein senator said the right of faith-based schools to decide their RSE/SPHE curricula in accordance with their own ethos leaves LGBT students ill-informed about how to have safe sex and perpetuates feelings of stigma and isolation. For as long as that is allowed continue, he said, LGBT youth are “in real trouble”.

Because schools are free to derogate from aspects of the RSE/SPHE curriculum in accordance with their own ethos, he said, “this means that many pupils across the State are not taught and informed how to have safe sex, the boundaries of consent, relevant health information on how to have healthy relationships because of their sexuality or gender identity.”

“This serves to cement the stigma and isolation that a young person feels during his or her formative years, when his or her sexuality or gender identity is not perceived as a norm, or moral as dictated to him or her by the ethos of a school,” he said.

Senator Warfield warned that, “as long as an ethos-based school can choose aspects of its curriculum to uphold the characteristic spirit of that school we are in real trouble.”

The Maltese parliament has passed legislation to allow the recognition of same-sex relationships as marriage. It did so by radically redefining all relationships in marriage, replacing the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in law with the gender-neutral term ‘spouse’ instead. They also replaced the use of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ with the term ‘parent’. Lesbian couples who have children via donor sperm are distinguished by the terms ‘the person who gave birth’ and ‘the other parent’.

The legislation was passed overwhelmingly with only one dissenting vote willing to defy a party whip. Edwin Vasallo called the bill a “dishonest law” that would change the very fabric of Maltese culture. He also cited his faith for opposing the bill: “A Christian politician cannot leave his conscience outside the door” when he enters parliament, he said.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who says he is Catholic, pledged to quickly introduce a gay “marriage” law in the predominantly Catholic country after his Labour Party won a snap election last month. Muscat told the BBC prior to the vote that promoting the LGBT agenda is a top priority of his administration. “Malta wants to keep leading on LGBT issues and civil liberties, to serve as a model for the rest of the world,” he said.

The Oireachtas committee set up to consider the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on abortion will begin holding public hearings in September. Chair of the committee, Senator Catherine Noone, said the committee would examine all aspects of retaining, repealing and replacing Article 40.3.3 and will hear from a range of experts in the course of its work. The committee will meet in the Fall to finalise the list of witnesses and will hold a public hearing on September 20th with Ms Justice Laffoy, the chairperson of the assembly. It is expected that the Committee will recommend the holding of an abortion referendum, but it is not known whether that should be a full repeal or partial amendment of the Eighth amendment, or what degree of liberalisation of the abortion law might follow upon that.

A Christian research and advocacy group, Faith in our Schools, have offered a pointed criticism of the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, who recently gave an address where he lashed out at a “stubborn reluctance within the Church” to changing the educational structures of Catholic schools.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, spokesperson for the group, Patrick Treacy said, “People at the frontline of protecting the Christian ethos of Catholic schools legitimately expect support and encouragement from the leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland.” Mr Treacy questioned why the archbishop did not turn his “keen intellect and the prolific pen” to the challenge of “convincing parents of the inspirational purpose of a Catholic school, or of encouraging teachers in such a school of their invaluable role in conveying the vision of the ‘Gospel’ to their pupils”.

The Faith in Our Schools group have themselves been actively involved in defending faith-based schools and met Education Minister Richard Bruton just last Tuesday to tell him it was their conviction that since 2011 there has been a systematic removal of faith and religious education from primary and secondary schools.

Later in the day, speaking on Newstalk, Mr Treacy said the Archbishop’s address sounded more like a journalist from the Irish Times writing an article about Ireland as though “Archbishop Martin sees himself as a commentator on Ireland when in fact he is a leader, the second highest leader of Irish Catholics.”

Moreover, he said that with Archbishop Martin, there is effectively “a veiled criticism in what he says all the time of his own”.

“For instance, in his address he said the Church in Ireland is very lacking precisely in ‘keen intellects and prolific pens addressing the pressing subjects of the day’. I would have to respectfully, utterly disagree with Archbishop Martin in that. I would say there is a plethora of people with ‘keen intellects and prolific pens’ but they don’t get the level of access to the media which I believe they should have. But it is not the function of the media or of political parties to advocate for the Catholic Church. It is the function of Archbishop Martin to do that and that is the fundamental problem we have with his address on Saturday, both generally and in relation to education,” he said.

Figures from the EU statistics agency Eurostat, show that Ireland had the highest birth rate among European Union countries last year. The figures, which were released Monday, also showed the State had the joint lowest death rate among EU nations.

There were 63,900 live births recorded in Ireland during 2016, a rate of 13.5 births for every 1,000 of the population. This birth rate was well ahead of Sweden and the UK (11.8 per 1,000) and France (11.7 per 1,000). Countries at the opposite end of the scale included Italy, with 7.8 children born per 1,000 people. Other southern European countries also recorded low birth rates: Portugal had a rate of 8.4 per 1,000 behind Greece ( 8.6) and Spain (8.7).

The figures did not include the total fertility rate which is the number of births per woman over a lifetime. The population replacement rate is 2.1 and in 2015, Ireland recorded a rate of just 1.92. Indeed, no EU country in 2015 had a fertility rate equal to or above the replacement level of 2.1.

A new Education Bill will require all schools to publish details of their provisions for pupils who wish to “opt out” of religious classes. However, this is not good enough for equality campaigners who want more detailed guidance on “realistic provisions” for catering to students who choose to opt out of religion class. Complaining about current arrangements, Education Equality said that children are left to sit at the back of the class during religious instruction, absorbing much of the material being taught contrary to their parents’ wishes while also feeling excluded from the rest of their classmates.

The Catholic Schools Partnership (CSP), the educational office of Catholic bishops, however has said that its schools already receive guidance on inclusivity and have led the way in integrating students from all faith traditions and none. The group says its work in this area has been acknowledged by the ESRI and Department of Education inspectors’ reports, which have found an “overwhelming majority of parents and students find their schools to be well-managed and welcoming”.

Prominent Irish pro-life group, the Life Institute, have ramped up their preparation for a likely abortion referendum by registering as a third party with the Standards in Public Office (SIPO) Commission. The move will allow them to raise funds for political purposes within the legal framework established by the Government in 1997 that requires donations to occur only within strict limits. A spokeswoman for the institute said they had not been registered previously as they have been “an education-and-awareness organisation who work to ensure the human rights of both mother and child are upheld.” However, now they will be able to fundraise specifically for the political work of winning any future abortion referendum: “For the upcoming referendum, the campaign to retain the Eighth will be registered with Sipo, and any political donations received will be included in the accounting,” she said.

In a hard hitting address in Germany, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that the Catholic educational establishment needs to focus more on faith formation and less on questions of ownership and management.

He said that while 90% of primary schools in Ireland are under religious patronage, and are almost fully financed by the State; yet, less than 80% of the population registers as Catholic, even as preparation for First Communion and Confirmation is carried out primarily in the schools. Nonetheless, he said, “There is a stubborn reluctance within the Church to allow that situation to change.   With the exception of Catholic Schools Week, the Irish religious education establishment is fixated on questions of ownership and management and too little on the purpose of the Catholic school and the outcomes of Catholic education in terms of faith formation.”

The Archbishop said he has urged many Catholic schools to hand themselves over to the State, but he has been largely unsuccessful. “From the moment of my appointment as Archbishop, I advocated a process of divestment of a substantial number Catholic schools to foster a more pluralist presence which would reflect changing demographics.  It would also open the possibility of more clearly defining the Catholic nature of catholic schools.  I have to admit that I have been relatively unsuccessful in pushing that idea into practice.” He said that, without such divestment, it will become harder for Catholic schools to maintain a genuine Catholic ethos: “The risk now looms large that effectively it will become more and more difficult to maintain a true Catholic ethos in Catholic schools.  The move towards parishes undertaking more effective faith formation of young people is miniscule.   I fear that much of the debate about schools fails to address the real challenges about the religious education of our young people.”