France’s Catholic bishops have hit back against President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed legislation to enable adults facing terminal illness to access assisted suicide.

In a statement, the bishops, who were meeting in Lourdes for their spring plenary assembly, voiced “our great concern and our deep reservations with regard to the bill announced on the end of life”.

Noting that the Marian shrine in Lourdes is traditionally a place where those who are sick come to experience healing, the bishops voiced their solidarity with “the most fragile people” and insisted that all human life must be “unconditionally respected and accompanied with authentic fraternity”.

“We reaffirm our attachment to the French way of refusing induced death,” they said, and asked that priority be given to palliative care instead, saying, “our democratic ideal, so fragile and so necessary, is based on the founding prohibition against killing”.

Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown has criticised what he describes as the “modern secular and consumerist culture”, and said that the political parties in the North who adopt this ideology “seem to assume that Catholic education has no place in a modern society”.

In his St Patrick’s Day sermon, Bishop McKeown reminded parishioners that Christianity was gone from being a natural part of life to being seen as a threat.

“Some decades ago Christianity was taken for granted,” he said. “Now in our modern secular and consumerist culture anything that dares to speak of morality, of right and wrong, of self-control, of sacrifice, is seen as a threat to the new ideology, to the market, to its dominant power,” he declared.

He continued: “If I am at the heart of what the world is all about then nobody will tell me or challenge me about my role as a little self-defining God. We know that most political parties here seem to assume that Catholic education has no place in a modern society, that there is no place for a dissident voice that doesn’t support the new secular ideology”.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is exterminating religious freedom, signalling a return by Moscow to Soviet-era levels of persecution of faith, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has said.

Sviatoslav Shevchuk said he was alarmed at the destruction of religious buildings and the arrests and killings of faith leaders.

“Today, in the occupied territory, there is not one Catholic priest. All my [Eastern Catholic] priests, even the Roman Catholic priests, were all expelled or imprisoned,” Shevchuk told Newsweek in an interview.

“Around 50 religious ministers, Protestant pastors, Orthodox priests, Catholic priests have been imprisoned or killed,” Shevchuk said. He added that Russia is returning “to the time of the Soviet Union where all of those religion were prohibited or overcontrolled, or simply destroyed.

“In the Soviet Union, [dictator Joseph] Stalin completely destroyed our church, imprisoned all our bishops and all our priests who would not sign an agreement to become Orthodox,” added Shevchuk, who started his priestly formation at an underground seminary in the USSR.

“Even in those territories where Russia were not able to come and occupy, almost 600 churches, places of worship, synagogues were destroyed.”

The World Happiness Report shows Ireland slipping in the ranks falling from 13th in 2022 to 14th last year and now 17th, according to a global survey.

Finland retains its place as the happiest country in the world.

The index is based on each surveyed individual’s own subjective evaluation.

Those under 30 are the unhappiest in Ireland and rank 21st happiest in the world; the happiest cohort in Ireland are those between 45 and 59 (16th in the world).

The top 10 happiest nations are made up of Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia.

Afghanistan remains the most unhappy country in the world with Lesotho and Lebanon the second- and third-worst respectively.

The report is compiled from the Gallup World Poll, which surveys around 1,000 people in each country and asks them to rank themselves from 0 (most unhappy) to 10. GDP per capita, life expectations, social supports and freedom to make life choices were also factored into the global survey.

The Christian principles on which Europe was founded are either being sidelined by secularists or instrumentalised by populists for political gain, according to the continent’s Christian leaders.

Catholic bishops have joined other Christian churches in calling for an open and consistent dialogue between church and state ahead of June’s elections to the European Parliament.

In a joint statement, the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), the Conference of European Churches, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, and Together for Europe said it is of “vital importance” to facilitate a participatory democracy and ensure the broadest possible participation of citizens in decision-making processes, as well as in the management of European affairs.

They noted that a significant portion of EU citizens who see the future of Europe through the lens of Christian values “now feel marginalized, as they do not have the opportunity to express their positions and opinions in an autonomous and distinct way.”

“We also notice the exclusion of any appropriate reference to Christian values in relevant EU texts,” they said.

The world population is expected to fall for the first time since the Black Death because of plummeting birth rates, a Lancet study has found.

Women would need to have 2.1 children each on average to maintain population growth, known as the “total fertility rate”, and as of 2021 it stood at 2.23 worldwide.

But experts say it is on a persistently downward trend, having fallen from 4.84 in 1950, and researchers predict it will decrease to 1.83 in 2050 and 1.59 by 2100.

It means that in 2050, 155 of 204 countries will have birth rates lower than required to sustain the population size.

The UK, like other high-income countries, has a fertility rate lower than the average, at just 1.49 in 2021.

It has fallen from 2.19 in 1950 and will continue to decrease to 1.38 and 1.30 in the next 25 and 75 years, the researchers said.

It will mean the current population of around 67 million becomes increasingly unbalanced toward older generations before falling as the eldest people die, unless there is migration.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/21/worlds-population-to-fall-for-first-time-since-black-death/

Legislation to allow ‘assisted suicide’ of those with six months to live has been recommended by a special Oireachtas committee. This was despite repeated warnings from expert witnesses that such a move would eventually lead to a widening of the grounds as in other countries.

However, a minority report will also be published recommending no such legislation.

The report of the committee says a new law should apply to those with six months to live, or 12 months where there is a neurodegenerative condition.

It argues that when a person’s capacity to make a decision is in doubt, a functional test should be introduced as part of the assessment for eligibility.

If someone assessed for assisted suicide temporarily loses decision-making capacity, the committee argues that their eligibility should be suspended while they are incapacitated.

A healthcare workers’ right to conscientious objection should be protected in law, although they will be obliged to refer a patient to a participating professional or oversight body.

To be considered for ‘assisted dying’, two formal requests must be made with a set specified interval in between – with at least one of these recorded in writing, before two independent witnesses.

Family members or other parties such as carers or guardians will not be able to request assisted dying for another person.

Three members of the Special Oireachtas Committee on ‘Assisted Dying’ have dissented from its final report and launched their own ‘Minority Report’ arguing against any legislative change.

Committee Chair Michael Healy-Rae, Independent Senator Ronán Mullen and Fianna Fáil TD for Longford Westmeath Robert Troy say the case for assisted suicide “has not been established, whereas the case against any change is overwhelming”.

“There are no lives not worth living,” the three dissenting voices say.

Meanwhile, the Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín TD said, as a human rights party, Aontú is fully opposed to this legislation as “all life should be protected and defended”.

He noted that the College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland are both opposed to assisted suicide legislation.

“We also saw testimony from Elma Walsh, the mother of the late anti-suicide campaigner Donal Walsh. She talked about the drop in the suicide rate following his public appeal to young people not to take their own lives. I think there would be a huge contradiction in our approach to tackling suicide rates if we were to legalise assisted suicide or euthanasia”.

“Imagine being a volunteer for a suicide prevention organisation if this legislation was in place… would you be expected to recommend assisted dying to a terminally-ill suicidal person who calls the helpline?”

MPs from all the main parties have backed changes to the law that would abolish rules allowing abortions up to the point of birth for an unborn child diagnosed with Down syndrome.

An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill being tabled by Sir Liam Fox, a former cabinet minister, would bring the law in line with the 24-week abortion limit for foetuses with no “serious disabilities”.

He said the change in the law would stop people with Down syndrome being treated as second-class citizens, a situation he described as an “absolutely utter travesty”.

The most recent abortion statistics published by the Department of Health and Social Care revealed that there were 859 abortions involving a baby diagnosed with Down syndrome in 2021, up by a quarter from the previous year.