I was recently a guest on Tonight with Dearbhail McDonald on TV3, discussing the relationship between church and state in Ireland. Here are two extracts from the episode: A secular state for a pluralist people Abortion rights in Catholic hospitals
Bebhinn Farrell has set up a petition to ask Enda Kenny to close the Oireachtas bars. You can sign the petition here. The Journal recently used the Freedom of Information Act to discover that the two bars in the Oireachtas – one for members only, and one for members and visitors – turned over €300,000 […]
I was a guest on last Sunday’s episode of Vincent Browne’s series ‘Challenging God’ on TV3, along with fellow guests Jesuit priest Peter McVerry and former professor of theology at TCD Sean Freyne, who has sadly died since the episode was recorded. The episode was dedicated in Sean Freyne’s memory. This topic for this episode […]
The Catholic parish priest who defended and shook hands with a convicted sex assaulter in 2009 has now bizarrely criticized the victim of the crime because she is the mother of a young child. The convicted man is about to be released from prison, and Father Sean Sheehy has said of the victim: “I don’t […]
Yesterday I debated Daniel Trilling of New Statesman (soon to be editor of New Humanist) about Trilling’s criticism of recent comments by Richard Dawkins about Islam. The discussion was on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence, hosted by WIlliam Crawley. I will analyse what we discussed in a later post, but I want to first of […]
Jane Donnelly and I were on our way home from town this evening, when we saw a large injured speckled gull on the footpath of Nassau Street. The probably teenaged bird had been hit by a car, and was standing stunned facing a shopfront, bleeding slightly from its beak. It was able to walk but […]
The UN Human Rights Committee is preparing to adopt a list of issues about Ireland at its session from 14 October to 1 November. Yesterday was the closing date for emailing submissions to the UN Human Rights Committee asking them to raise issues with Ireland. Atheist Ireland has sent the following submission. Recommendations / questions […]
I was a guest on last Sunday’s first episode of Vincent Browne’s new series ‘Challenging God’ on TV3, along with fellow guests theologian and author James Mackey, and lecturer at the Mater Dei Institute Fainche Ryan. This episode discussed: ‘Did God make humans or did humans make God’? I will analyse what we discussed in […]
In response to a letter from Atheist Ireland, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore has told today’s Irish Times through a spokesman that he “respected the Constitution and would comply with his constitutional obligations” after receiving legal advice on the religious oath for Council of State members. This ambiguous statement seems to imply that he will swear the […]
Atheist Ireland has today written to Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, to remind him that next Monday, as a member of the Council of State, he will become be the first Irish person to be asked to swear a Constitutional oath in the presence of a god that he is publicly on record as not believing in. […]