Key Quotes for 2010

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Last update: Wednesday 25th March




Catholic priests in Northern Ireland’s largest diocese have been told to drop the sign of peace at Mass because of the risk of swine ‘flu.
Religious Persecution	The Universe – October 25th 2009



Parents will lose the right to withdraw children from sex education lessons once they reach 15, the Government has announced. Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) will be mandatory in primary and secondary schools from 2011.
Education	The Sentinel – November 6th 2009



The prize limits on the most easily available fruit machines were doubled earlier this year. This was despite complaints from the Alliance and other Christian groups that the Government was being cavalier with gambling regulations and increasing the risk to the vulnerable just to help arcades struggling in the recession.
Social Issues	Idea – November/December 2009



A man whose prayers were for forgiveness were overheard by police who bugged his car had been convicted of murder. George Maben’s “confession” was played to an Old Bailey jury, which found him guilty of killing his girl-friend’s wealthy mother. It was after detectives heard his whispered words “God, forgive me for what I have done” that they arrested Maben, aged 45, of Rosehill, Surrey, for strangling Maureen Cosgrove, Aged 65.
Social Issues	The Sentinel – November 6th 2009



A committee of MPs has urged the Government to remove any mention of Christianity from the constitutions of two of Britain’s over-seas territories. The Foreign Affairs Committee has told the Foreign Office that Christianity should not be singled out above other faiths and that the constitutions in the countries, which are remnants of the British Empire, should include protection for gay rights. However, the Bishop of Winchester, Michael Scott-Joynt, speaking to The Mail on Sunday, has criticised the move as ‘spurious political correctness’. The Foreign Office has asked two territories – the Cayman Islands in the Western Caribbean Sea and St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic – to amend their constitutions in order to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights and United Nations protocols.
World Issues	Salvationist – 31st October 2009



Faith schools have received a firm endorsement from the government following the publication pf a new report by Ofsted, the office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. “Independent Faith schools give pupils a strong sense of personal worth and help them understand the importance of being a good citizen,” said the Ofsted report, Independent Faith Schools.
Education	The Church of England Newspaper - November 6th 2009



The Bishop of the Bahamas has denounced government plans to restore capital punishment. In his charge to the diocese’s 109th synod gathered at Christ Church Cathedral in Nassau, Bishop Laish Boyd told delegates that hanging was “not a deterrent to crime.” “The disregard for human life and a perverted value system which allows a person to maim or to kill another in a dispute, are realities that capital punishment cannot ever address, even though a hanging may satisfy the desire for retribution,” he said on Oct 21.
Social Issues	The Church of England Newspaper- October 30th 2009



Catholic education administrators in Pakistan’s Punjab province have said that their schools face huge additional security costs as the security situation in the country deteriorates. Under provincial government guidelines in the wake of recent terror attacks, schools must provide eight-feet-high boundary walls, surveillance cameras, metal detectors and scanners, a barbed wire perimeter and at least two armed guards.
World Issues	The Universe – October 8th 2009



Christians “aren’t going to disappear quietly from the marketplace” warned the Bishop of Litchfield last week in a letter published in his diocesan magazine. In reaction to the nurse, Shirley Chaplin, who was threatened with the sack if she didn’t hide her cross whilst on duty at the Royal Devon and Exeter Trust Hospital, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill said: “Ethnic minorities are far more anxious about the rampant secularism and commercialism that erodes all Christian standards than they are about their host country properly celebrating its Christian foundations. “No one goes to a Muslim country and expects local councils to silence the mosques out of sensitivity to Christians”
Religious Persecution	The Church of England Newspaper – October 30th 2009



The Primate of All Ireland has written to the Irish Government demanding that the country’s overseas development aid budget should not be targeted by further cutbacks. Acknowledging the challenges facing the country’s finances, the cardinal wrote: “We believe that savings made through further cuts to ODA will have a marginal impact on out problems but a devastating effect on the lives of some of world’s poorest people.”
World Issues	The Universe – October 8th 2009



Catholic leaders in Scandinavia have condemned a vote by the Lutheran Church in Sweden to begin conducting gay ‘weddings’ six months after homosexual marriages became legal in the country. “This decision expresses a vision of marriage radically different from how it is conceived by the Church and Christianity,” the Swedish Catholic Church’s ecumenical officer, Fr Fredrick Emanuelson, Said in a joint statement with the Orthodox Church’s spokesman, Fr Misha Jaksic. “It represents a swing not only away from Christian tradition, but also from ideas about the nature of marriage which are common to all religions.” Meanwhile, the Lutheran bishop of Stockholm, Eva Brunne, who lives in a lesbian partnership, said local parishes would have lost congregation members if gay ‘weddings’ had been rejected.
Religion/Spirituality	The Universe – November 1st 2009



The effectiveness of Scotland’s sexual health programmes have been questioned following the publication of last year’s figures for teenage abortion. The new figures, made available under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed there were 751 pregnancies, among under-16s. A total of 442 pregnancies were terminated, of which 103 were in girls 14 years of age. There were 309 births to under-16s with six babies born to mothers aged 13 and under. Campaigners and senior Church figures fear the numbers will continue to rise as long as there is no acceptance of the fact that the Government’s strategies are not working.
Health	The Universe – October 8th 2009



The European Union’s governing commission has warned Turkey that it must provide better protection for religious rights if it still hopes to join the EU by 2015. The report was issued as the European Court of Human Rights accepted two separate suits by Orthodox and Protestant churches that Turkey had violated their rights by denying them property ownership and legal registration. It said EU experts had welcomed the enactment of 2008 law on religious foundations, but remained concerned that religious teaching at Turkish schools continued to “favour Islam”, while non-Muslim communities faced difficulties building and maintaining places of worship.
Politics	The Universe – November 1st 2009



in a relentless and cynical campaign to win votes. The bishop said Catholics needed to be “on the alert” following the BNP’s success in the European elections, and he warned that people should not underestimate the rise of the far-right party now it had a foothold in Europe with two MEP’s. The Bishop strongly rejected BNP leader Nick Griffin’s Question Time claim that British culture is “white and Christian”. Pointing to St Marie’s RC Cathedral in Sheffield, where 57 language communities are represented at the weekend Masses, he said he was “certain” that at least half of the congregation had not been born in England.
Politics	The Universe – October 8th 2009



Hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children may be getting little benefit from the most commonly used inhaler in the UK, researchers said yesterday. A study found that if used daily, salbutamol, know under the brand name Ventolin, may fail to prevent asthma attacks in 100,000 children who have a genetic mutation. But it warned people must not stop using their inhalers until more research has been carried out.
Health	The Sentinel – October 7th 2009

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