The Workplace Relations Commission has rejected a challenge by a former seminarian against a yoga studio. The studio banned him for life after he responded to a question about Christmas by saying it was hocus pocus that celebrated the rape and abandonment of a child....
In a recent Article in the Irish Times by Patsy McGarry, the Bishop of Meath, Tom Deenihan referred to “negative, ideologically driven and adversarial depiction of Catholic schools” as “grim places of indoctrination that children are forced to attend by Church and State”. But many...
Atheist Ireland is continuing to engage with the ETBI regarding the human rights of families in ETB schools. The following is some of the content of our recent letter to the ETBI. We hope to continue to engage with the ETBI to ensure our human...
The Department of Education in Northern Ireland is reviewing the core Religious Education syllabus. It has also issued Guidelines on withdrawal from Religious Education. The Review follows the recent UK Supreme Court judgment in relation to JR87. That found that the current religious education syllabus...
In a recent Irish Times article, Mary McAleese argues that infant baptism undermines the human rights of children. Specifically, she argues that: “It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the...
Some Christians including Peadar Tóibín TD want Dublin City Council’s Winter Lights to be renamed Christmas Lights. This is not about people changing a religious festival to a secular one. It is about some Christians trying to force a religious meaning onto a secular display...
The recent case at the UK Supreme Court, about withdrawing from religious education in schools, highlights the flaws in a WRC decision in Ireland three years ago. The UK case was based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which Ireland has ratified (European Convention...
In the case yesterday at the Supreme Court in the UK on the Northern Ireland education system, the court found that: The religious education course in Northern Ireland Schools was ‘indoctrination’. Northern Ireland was pursuing an aim of indoctrination by not ‘respecting’ parents’ philosophical beliefs....
A Supreme Court judgement in the UK today is of great relevance to the Irish education system, and reinforces the points made by Atheist Ireland in a recent article The right to an objective education goes beyond avoiding ‘faith formation‘. The UK Supreme Court case...
The Department of Education, school Patron bodies, TDs, the ETBs, and others often refer to ‘faith formation’ in schools, by which they typically mean religious instruction according to the rites of a particular religion. A consequence of this is that the Constitutional right of children...