The Oireachtas Joint Committee on assisted suicide held its first meeting, in private session, last night.
TDs and Senators will decide next week whether public hearings will begin in May or September.
The Committee must issue a final report within nine months of the first public session.
It is expected that next week’s meeting, also on Tuesday evening, will decide on whether to seek a change in its terms of reference.
Independent Senator Rónán Mullen is understood to have made a presentation suggesting the terms of reference explicitly state that it is open to the Committee to recommend no change to the existing law.
The Committee will also consider whether its title should be changed to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Suicide.
The terms of reference state that the committee will consider all “relevant considerations arising from the provision of a statutory right to provide assistance to a person to end their life and the statutory right to receive such assistance”.
Over 70 international religious groups and experts have sent a letter to the Biden Administration urging it to address the state-backed persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in Vietnam.
“Over the past twelve months, we have observed the rapid escalation of repressive measures against religious groups that resist government control. Of particular concern are the government’s intensifying efforts to force Christians to renounce their faith, crack down on house churches that do not submit themselves to government control, and coerce members of independent religious groups to join government-controlled religious organizations,” the letter says.
One of the signatories, the Law firm ADF international, said no one should be persecuted, punished, or imprisoned for expressing their faith.
Sean Nelson of ADF added: “Over the past year, we have seen an increase in serious government harassment towards religious minority faiths in Vietnam, especially Christians. The Biden Administration now has an opportunity to stand up for those most persecuted by addressing this situation directly with the Vietnamese government. We implore Secretary Blinken to take this opportunity to speak out in support of the people of Vietnam’s fundamental right to worship freely and live out their faith, without fear of punishment and persecution.”
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case concerning an evangelical Christian and former U.S. Postal Service worker, who was denied an accommodation to observe his Sunday sabbath by not taking Sunday shifts.
Federal law prohibits employers from firing employees seeking religious accommodations unless the employer can show that those accommodations cannot be “reasonably” met without “undue hardship.” In a 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the high court found that the “undue hardship” standard is met even at a minimal cost.
Gerald Groff said he sought employment at the post office since it did not deliver mail on Sundays, however, that practice changed during his employment there, leading him to seek an accommodation. However, the USPS refused.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of USPS, arguing the post office would face an “undue hardship” by accommodating Groff’s request to excuse him from Sunday shifts. But the U.S. Supreme Court agreed earlier this year to take up the case.
An English-based historian has called for a reappraisal of the positive contribution of Nuns to Ireland before memory of it is lost forever.
Writing in the Irish Times, Gillian O’Brien, a Reader in Modern Irish History at Liverpool John Moores University, said it is impossible to fully understand the development of Ireland without considering the significance of the female religious orders.
“Overlooking their contributions to communities across the country erases women (once again) from history. And there is an urgency about recording the history of the buildings and landscapes, their material culture and the lives of the women who lived in the convents before it is too late”, she said.
Ms O’Brien noted that convents formed the backbone of Irish Catholic society from the late-18th century until well into the 20th century.
“Many nuns attended university, many had fulfilling and varied careers. Female religious orders were significant as employers – of teachers and healthcare staff, of staff in the convents and of those who provided goods and services to the convents”.
She acknowledged the story of nuns and convents in Ireland is not black and white, but added that it is not sufficient to consider all nuns as cruel overseers of Magdalene laundries or as comic characters in popular entertainment.
She concluded with a plea that time is of the essence.
“The stories of the communities (inside and outside the buildings) must be recorded, and they must be recorded now”.
A primary school teacher in Oristano, Sardinia, has been suspended for 20 days on reduced pay for teaching her students to construct a rosary for Christmas and for praying a Hail Mary and Our Father with them.
The Oristano school office’s decision of suspension was taken after two mothers protested. While other parents defend her, she said she will appeal the decision.
On 22nd December last year, Marisa Francescangeli showed her students how to construct a rosary with beads for the occasion of Christmas and told them “to wish the children a Merry Christmas by reciting two prayers with them,” she told L’Unione Sarda. In reaction to this, two mothers complained to the school principal. After the complaint, a meeting between the parents and the teacher was held. Marisa Francescangeli recalls: “I even apologised for the gesture, remembering, however, that at the beginning of the year, I had asked all the parents for permission to recite some prayers with the children. No one had been opposed.”
Despite this, on March 2nd, Ms Francescangeli was given a suspension notice for twenty days.
A Ukrainian official has said that the Russian military attacked a church in Ukraine on Sunday as many Ukrainians were celebrating the Orthodox Easter.
According to Newsweek, Serhii Lysak, the head of Ukraine’s Dnipro Oblast Military Administration, shared details about the attack in a Telegram post on Sunday morning.
He said it had taken place in Nikopol, southern Ukraine, and left two people injured – a 57-year-old man and 38-year-old woman.
The attack also damaged several residential and farm buildings.
Lysak said the attack showed that “there is nothing sacred” for Russian forces.
Hundreds of letters have been sent to Education Minister Norma Foley by medical professionals, parents, teachers and school principals over plans to include lessons on pornography and gender ideology in sex education classes at primary and secondary school level.
The correspondence was seen by the Sunday Independent under the Freedom of Information Act. The tone of the letters ranges from concern to anger, with some threatening to remove their children from classes.
One primary school teacher questions teacher-training videos on “how to socially transition a primary school child from a girl to a boy”.
The same teacher complains that NCCA resources also include books such as The Boy in The Dress and My Princess Boy.
A post-primary teacher says she is “deeply concerned about the graphic content” of books on the curriculum.
She says she will “remove my children from any classroom” that teaches any theory “outside a solid and scientific basis”.
She also says “teachers who do not believe in ‘gender identity’ should have the right to express their views without being bullied or called trans- or homophobic”.
The Netherlands is to widen its euthanasia regulations to include the possibility of doctors assisting in the death of terminally ill children aged between one and 12.
They already allow infanticide, or euthanasia for infants, of those under 12 months of age.
The new rules would apply to between five and 10 children a year who “suffer unbearably” from their disease, have no hope of improvement and for whom palliative care cannot bring relief, the government said on Friday.
In a new attack against the Catholic Church, the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega expelled from Nicaragua three nuns who were running a home for the elderly.
The authoritarian regime expelled Costa Rican siblings Sister Isabel and Sister Cecilia and Guatemalan Sister Teresa, who were given 72 hours to leave the country.
The Nicaraguan General Directorate for Migration and Foreigners began issuing summons to various religious and foreign missionaries in late February.
According to local news outlet, 100% Noticias, new requirements are being demanded of such religious to remain in the country.
The nuns were in charge of the López Carazo nursing home in the city of Rivas in the Diocese of Granada, whose bishop, Jorge Solórzano, was reportedly notified by the dictatorship of the expulsion.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) forbade a motion that expressed ‘serious concerns’ about the teaching of gender ideology to young children from being discussed at their recent annual congress.
The motion was put forward for consideration by the Gorey Branch of the INTO, but was ruled to be ‘out of order’ for breaching unspecified rules and for being ‘non-inclusive’.
The INTO Standing Orders Committee told the branch that the motion would not be considered as it breached the rules and objectives of the INTO and ‘did not uphold’ the ‘inclusive nature’ of the INTO. It’s understood that requests from Branch members, asking the INTO to tell them exactly which policies the motion was in contravention of, went unanswered.
The Gorey Branch wished to express ‘serious concerns in relation to the proposed changes to the RSE curriculum, with the introduction of Gender Ideology, as proposed by the NCCA.’
The members also called on the INTO to acknowledge that ‘Irish schools are already inclusive spaces,’ but that gender ideology has been deeply divisive in schools in both the US and the UK.
