Mothers have a vital role to play "for the healthy development of children," according to Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Officials from the Department of Education and the Catholic Church are examining transferring control of certain Dublin schools from the Church to other patrons.

A leading Church of England clergyman has claimed that Christians are being forced to pray in secret for "fear of offending others".

People who have concerns about same-sex adoption of children have been described as 'retarded homophobes' by the UK's state-funded national adoption agency.

A time of anti-Christian persecution is at hand and the Equality Bill could make matters far worse, says the Church of England Newspaper.

The apathy of Catholics regarding same-sex marriage has been described as "abysmal" by the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, Thomas J Tobin, in his weekly column in the Rhode Island Catholic’.

The real clash of cultures in the world is between people who believe in God and those “who disdain such belief and aggressively oppose any tolerance of its influence on law, morality or the public square,” according to the Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady.

A conference to promote same-sex marriage has been told that children raised by same-sex parents do just as well as children raised by men and women.

A leading UK employment lawyer has said that British equality legislation has created a “pecking order of competing equalities” in which religion is near the bottom.

The Oireachtas committee considering a Constitutional amendment on children's rights has stopped short of recommending a referendum.

A conference being held in Dublin today to promote same-sex marriage has been part-funded by the EU.

Watching adult television programmes makes children more likely to become sexually active in their early teens, new research shows.

The current economic crisis is causing increasing strain on families, new figures released by Accord, the Catholic marriage agency, show.

The Government is to cut child benefit for all income groups across the board, instead of implementing means-testing.

The Catholic Church is to establish a new body, the Catholic Education Service, to "coordinate and bring unity of purpose" to all of those participating in Catholic education, Bishop Leo O'Reilly has signalled.

A teacher has become the latest Christian to be punished by bosses for expressing his religious beliefs at work.

The Minister of Justice, Dermot Ahern, is set to propose that a new crime of blasphemous libel be inserted into the Defamation Bill, which will be discussed by the Oireachtas committee on justice today.

Roughly half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once in their lives, according to a new study by the Pew Research Centre.

New plans for compulsory sex education in the UK will mean that children as young as 11 will be taught about homosexual relationships and civil partnerships. However, faith schools will be free to teach against sex outside marriage and homosexuality, under government proposals.

The new Archbisop of New York, Timothy Dolan, has said that a society which tampers with the definition of marriage is “asking for trouble".

In an interview with US newspaper the New York Post, he argued that traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people's moral DNA.

"There's an in-built code of right and wrong that's embedded in the human DNA," Dolan said on Wednesday, a week after becoming the New York Archdiocese's new leader.

"Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life.

"And if we begin to tamper with the very definition of marriage, then we're going to be in big trouble. We're not anti-gay -- we're pro the most basic definition of marriage."

Archbishop Dolan's remarks come a week after Governor of New York, David Paterson, held a press conference to announce his push for legislation allowing gay marriage, a move critics viewed as a provocative insult to the former Milwaukee archbishop on the eve of his installation at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Archbship Dolan, who has spoken with Paterson, said, "He does not strike me as the kind of man who would insult anybody, so, no, I would not interpret that as such."

28/04/09