The Iona Institute ~ for Religion and Society
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The Iona Blog
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.
Charity or tolerance: which is better?
~Robert Putnam of ‘Bowling Alone’ fame has co-authored a new book with David E Campbell called ‘American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us’. Its findings are that religious people are more charitable and non-religious people are more tolerant. Here’s my question, which is better for society, charity or tolerance? Of course, a person can be both charitable and tolerant, both intolerant and uncharitable, and various other combinations in between. Read more...
Defending Catholic ethos: a teacher’s view
~I have recently retired after spending thirty five years as a Secondary school teacher in Ireland all of it spent in Catholic schools. I thank you for highlighting the possible dangers contained in the Teaching Council’s Code of Professional Conduct which I feel may not be fully appreciated by Boards of Management or school Principals or indeed by the teachers themselves. Read more...
Abortion providers target conscience rights
~We don’t normally comment on abortion on this blog and in fact this blog isn’t really about abortion at all, but rather about the conscience rights of doctors and of medical institutions like hospitals and the attempt by abortion supporters to severely curtail if not eliminate those rights. Read more...
Does preschool really make kids more moral?!
~A report in today's Irish Times suggests that children who are preschooled don't just do better economically and educationally, but also grow up to be more moral. They quote Dr Larry Schweinhart, who carried out research on a preschool scheme launched in the 1960s. According to this research, children who attend preschool are less likely to lie, cheat or steal as adults, a conference was told yesterday. Read more...
A Catholic headmaster’s fight against political correctness
~Thank you for highlighting the issue of the proposed new professional code for Irish teachers, with all its inherent dangers for Christian teachers in your most recent e-letter. It reminds me an issue that I faced in London some years ago. Read more...
New Teaching Code has serious implications for religious freedom
~Very few people will be aware of the Teaching Council of Ireland or its Code of Professional Conduct. The code could have potentially far-reaching and worrying implications for the teaching of religion in our schools. Read more...
Are the kids really alright?
~The movie the chattering classes are talking about at the moment is ‘The kids are alright’, about a lesbian couple and their children via a sperm donor. It’s based on a true story and the message of the movie is in the title. Read more...
Roscommon case does not show need for children’s rights amendment
~Children’s rights organisations plus a number of politicians have reacted to the publication of the Roscommon Child Care Case report by calling for a children’s rights referendum. For example, in a statement the Children Right’s Alliance said: “The Constitution currently does not grant individual rights to children, within marital families. It is clear that constitutional reform must take place, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that all children are protected.” Read more...
The social issues: what FF and FG promised in 2007
~In the run-up to the 2007 General Election The Irish Catholic sent a questionnaire to the various political parties asking them for their position on various social issues including the family and the right to life. Last week I did a follow-up piece for The Irish Catholic and I compared what the two main parties promised then and what they have delivered since. Read more...
The Oireachtas report that can’t face up to the facts about the family
~Earlier this week the Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection issued a report called ‘Financial Disincentives to Marriage and Cohabitation’. On the plus side, the report admits that children raised by lone parents often face bigger problems than those raised by two parents. On the negative side, it refuses to recognise that marriage is generally better for kids than cohabitation. Read more...
Limerick city’s sky-high rate of births outside marriage
~The other day I was on the Joe Nash radio show on Limerick Today. Under discussion were new figures showing that in the first quarter of this year, a massive 62 percent of children in Limerick were born outside marriage. Read more...
Why the conscience victory at Council of Europe mattered
~Last week's vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in favour of religious freedom was a welcome boost for those concerned about freedom of speech and conscience. In the past number of years, such victories have been all too rare. Read more...
Who needs fathers when TV will do instead?
~There was an excellent article in The Irish Independent magazine on Saturday that dealt with the trials and tribulations of conceiving children through the use of donor-sperm. There are more ethical problems attaching to this than you can shake a stick at and Breda O’Brien wrote a paper for us on some of those problems that we published last year. Read more...
How tax individualisation makes child benefit cut worse for stay-at-home mums
~The new Conservative government in the UK has landed itself in hot water over its plan to cut child benefit payments to what it describes as “higher earners”. And while the Government here is focused on cutting non-essential spending here, it might learn some useful lessons on what not to do from the approach taken by the Tories. Read more...
Benign Nobel tale of IVF not quite so noble
~The international media has been full of stories about the granting of the Nobel Prize to Dr Robert Edwards, one of the scientists behind the development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). But there are a couple of dirty little secrets about IVF which all the happy media stories don't reveal. Read more...
Surveying levels of religious knowledge
~A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life generated a lot of headlines by showing that, although Americans are more religious than most people in the developed world, they also appear to be relatively ignorant about religion. Read more...
Regulating (or forbidding) conscientious objection
~The subject of our conference last Friday becomes more relevant with each passing day. A report is currently before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) calling on member-states of the Council to ‘regulate’ conscientious objection so as to ensure that women seeking procedures such as abortion are not denied their ‘right’ as a result of someone’s moral objection to same. Read more...
A Bouquet of Barbed Wire and the purpose of moral boundaries
~ITV aired a remake over the last three weeks of the (for its time) shocking 1976 TV series, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire. The character around whom all the action centres is Prue, the university-age daughter of Peter who is unhealthily obsessed with her. Read more...
The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the aim of The Iona Institute
~One of the aims of The Iona Institute is to highlight, and to do what we can to counter the rise of aggressive secularism and the consequent and growing threat to freedom of religion and conscience. Just how relevant this work is, was highlighted by remarks made both by Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, during the Pope’s visit to Britain which ended yesterday. Read more...
The Irish Times poll on sex and society II
~Here are a few more thoughts on that sex, sin and society poll in The Irish Times. Yesterday the paper ran part two of the poll and one question asked respondents to rank in order of personal disapproval eleven types of behaviour that all the major religions regard as sinful. Read more...
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