The Iona Institute ~ for Religion and Society
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Opinions contained in The Iona Blog are not necessarily those of The Iona Institute. The Iona Blog is open to anyone who broadly shares the views of The Iona Institute. If you wish to post a comment on a relevant topic please email 200 – 400 words to info@ionainstitute.ie and it will be considered for inclusion in the blog.
Democratic candidate to medical staff: No Catholics need apply
~The election of a Republican, Scott Brown, to the US Senate from the heavily-Democratic Massachusetts is the political equivalent of an tsunami. But it's worth noting some of the positions taken by the defeated candidate, Democratic state Attorney General, Martha Coakley. Read more...
Attack on faith schools an attack on freedom, says Telegraph columnist
~The Daily Telegraph's Benedict Brogan has a trenchant column in today's paper on New Labour's attack on faith schools. Read more...
Humanists and freedom of speech (David Quinn)
~An article in today’s Irish Times asks a number of people what will replace the Church as our moral compass. For many people, of course, the Church will remain as their moral compass, or more accurately, Jesus Christ will remain as their moral compass. One of the individuals asked to comment is Ann James, Secretary of the Humanist Association of Ireland. I’m inclined to place scare-quotes around humanists because whenever you see an organisation described as ‘humanist’ it is really atheist. It wasn’t always so. Among the first people to be called humanists were Christian intellectuals such as Thomas More and Erasmus 500 years ago. Read more...
Labour's attack on faith schools-Odone
~Christine Odone's piece in today's Telegraph on the relationship between Labour and faith schools is a devastating account of how that party in the UK has conducted an ideological war against religious schools. Odone points out that there is a “substantial secularist wing” of the Labour party which “regards faith schools as an elitist mind-control experiment, the product of a powerful coterie of religious bigots and snooty middle-class parents”. Read more...
More than a piece of paper
~We are well used to the debate about marriage focusing on the potential harm that separation, divorce, cohabitation etc has on children. And rightly so, as all the evidence tells us that children reared outside of intact marriages are more likely to experience poverty, abuse, take drugs, become sexually active earlier, drop out of school etc. Not only is that bad for children there’s a knock-on effect to society too. Read more...
UK politicians far bolder than Irish on marriage, religion
~Gordon Brown's statement to the effect that religious people should bring their convictions to the public square, including the political arena, is welcome. Yes, his Government's actions belie his words, but the fact that he has said is useful in terms of the wider debate about the place of religion in society. Read more...
Cameron and Phillips on marriage
~Columnist Melanie Phillips has written a very cogent piece on David Cameron’s support for marriage. Philips’ argument is that Cameron is facing in two different directions at once. On the one hand he says he is for marriage, but on the other, he also espouses the kind of social liberalism that has so grossly undermined marriage in Britain, and is doing so here as well. Read more...
UK politicians far bolder than Irish on marriage, religion
~Gordon Brown's statement to the effect that religious people should bring their convictions to the public square, including the political arena, is welcome. Yes, his Government's actions belie his words, but the fact that he has said is useful in terms of the wider debate about the place of religion in society. Read more...
Best interests of the child?
~Almost everyone agrees that when decisions about a child are being made, those decisions should be made in the child’s best interests. That’s the easy part. The hard part is deciding which decision, from a whole range of options, would best serve the child in a given case. For example, parents frequently disagree with one another as to the best course of action for their children. Read more...
Polyamory: the next sexual frontier
~Polyamory is a term of fairly recent coinage that describes a situation whereby someone is in a sexual relationship with more than one person and all parties to the relationship know this. Read more...
Former Minister suggests HSE guilty of "anti-adoption bias"
~Lost amid the coverage of the Murphy report when it came out at the end of November was a very interesting comment by Noel Ahern TD that there might be an “anti-adoption bias” at senior levels of the Irish Department of Health and of the Health Service Executive (HSE). Read more...
Pro-marriage politics is winning politics is the message from Labour's U-turn
~The news that Labour in the UK is about to perform what can only be described as an incredible U-turn with regard to family policy is good news for people who believe in an evidence-based approach to the family. Not because Labour are likely to implement any marriage-friendly policies in practice, but because it shows that backing marriage is not only sensible policy, but good politics. Read more...
Justice McGuinness: realist or defeatist?
~The Law Reform Commission have proposed allowing teenagers to obtain contraception without their parents' knowledge. The proposal has been criticised by, amongst others, The Iona Institute, and the National Parents Council, for leaving parents out of the equation and letting down young people. Read more...
In defence of parental choice: a selection of articles
~A number of articles have appeared in the press in the last few days defending parental choice in education. On Saturday, chairman of the Bishops' education commission, Bishop Leo O'Reilly, had a piece in the Irish Times pointing out that allowing religious schools was simply showing respect for pluralism and diversity. Read more...
Archbishop Chaput on the Manhattan Declaration
~Archbishop Charles Chaput is one of America's leading defenders of the traditional family. In an interview with Catholic News Agency, he explains, amongst other things why he signed the Manhattan Declaration. He described it as a “straightforward” statement defending the sanctity of life, religious liberty and the definition of marriage as a union of husband and wife.” Read more...
Supporting marriage
~Those of us who support traditional marriage are regularly criticised by the liberal left as narrow-minded and intolerant. They say we are narrow-minded because we are blinkered to the realities of family diversity already in our society. They say that we are intolerant because by promoting the traditional family (where children are raised by their biological parents)... Read more...
Natural law equals ‘bigotry’?
~Increasingly belief in the natural law is being equated by its critics with ‘bigotry’ because if you believe in the natural law it is very hard not to also believe in traditional marriage and to oppose other forms of marriage. George Weigel has written to very good effect about this and argues that calling natural law proponents ‘bigots’ is a crude attempt to bully them out of the public arena. Read more...
Who’s your daddy? II
~The other day I blogged about a programme on BBC3 presented by pop singer Alesha Dixon called ‘Who’s your daddy?’ The programme was excellent in terms of recording the pain felt by children who have never known their fathers. It was very poor in terms of analysis. The best Alesha could offer was that there are now lots of families in this situation, people should use condoms, and we can’t let history repeat itself. Read more...
Recession slowing down divorce rate, not strengthening marriage
~Last month, we carried a story about how the recession was leading to a drop in divorces, not so much because troubled marriages were suddenly fine again, but because couples couldn't afford the legal fees and couldn’t sell the house in the current market. Read more...
Who’s your daddy?
~Pop singer Alesha Dixon presented a documentary on BBC3 last night called ‘Who’s your daddy?’ Dixon herself is from a single parent family, barely knew her father, and has several half-brothers and sisters. As she put it last night, when you don’t know your father, “It’s like your spirit can’t rest till you get certain questions answered in your life.” Read more...
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