Yet another study confirms the benefits of religious practice

 

Robust new research confirms that religiosity is linked to well-being, particularly when there is a match between personal beliefs and the surrounding culture.

The newest research took an unusual approach. As the interpretation of data can sometimes be affected by researcher bias, the authors of the study invited 120 different analysis teams to answer the same research questions. Different teams used different analytical approaches but reached a consistent conclusion: religious people report higher well-being.

The dataset provided to the analysts featured data from 10,535 participants from 24 countries from six continents and it included different ethnic and religious groups.

54pc of participants did not identify with any religion while the rest were Christian (31pc), Muslim (6pc), Hindu (3pc), Buddhist (2pc) or were part of other religious groups.

Participants answered questions about their physical health (pain, sleep, dependence on medication), psychological health (self-esteem, negative feelings, body-image) and social relationships (personal relationships, social support, sexual satisfaction).

Of 120 analysis teams, all but three reported a positive answer to the first research question: “Do religious people self-report higher well-being?”

The analysts were also asked, before and after the research, about the likelihood of this hypothesis. The researchers’ prior beliefs about religiosity being positively related to self-reported well-being were already high (72pc), but were raised further (85pc) after them having conducted the analysis.

For the second hypothesis, the teams were asked to establish whether, according to the data, the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion. By cultural norms, the authors of the study meant whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country.

“95% of the teams reported a positive effect size for the moderating influence of cultural norms of religion on the association between religiosity and self-reported well-being, with 65% of the confidence/credible intervals excluding zero”, found the study.

This means that when religious practice is seen as something socially expected and desireable, this contributes even more to the link between religion and well-being. Conversely, in countries where religion is considered more trivial, or it is even stigmatised, “the relationship between religion and well-being may be absent or even reversed”.

When asked about their own expectation about the likelihood of this second hypothesis, 71pc the analysis teams considered the hypothesis likely before seeing the data but this percentage dropped to 54pc after having seen them.

It is interesting to compare the data about Ireland with the rest of the dataset. The Irish score for self-reported well-being (3.6 on a 0-5 scale) is slightly lower that the overall figure (3.7). The Irish level of religiosity (0.49 on a 0-1 scale) is higher than overall (0.40). The perceived descriptive norm of religiosity in one’s country is higher in Ireland (0.46 on a 0-1 scale) than abroad overall (0.42).

This means that the Irish respondents reported themselves being more religious than the rest of the world but they experience almost the same level of well-being.

This may well be down to the fact that religious people in Ireland are not yet that different from the norm as religious practice has only declined sharply in relatively recent times and we have not been a secular country for very long.

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Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

An extreme ‘exclusion-zone’ law is debated in the Seanad

 

Almost no country in the Western world bans holding pro-life vigils or protests outside clinics and hospitals that facilitate or conduct abortions, but the Seanad has just voted in favour of a Bill that would make it a criminal offence to do just that. It even includes pharmacies. Most other countries have declined to take this step because it would represent such a fundamental attack on the right to protest.

Fortunately, the Bill, tabled by Senators Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) and Paul Gavan (Sinn Féin) is unlikely to pass in the Dáil as it has no support from the Government. However, the fact that is has gotten this far speaks volumes.

Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, said that the Bill won’t survive a constitutional challenge because it goes too far in curbing civil liberties, but the Government is working on its own legislation on this issue.

The Bill bans any opposition, including praying silently, to abortion, or even to contraception, within 100 metres of venues providing abortion or prescribing contraceptive pills. It is so extreme that it would make a criminal offence, for instance, to run a pro-life rally in O’Connell Street because there are pharmacies dispensing contraception and/or the abortion pill nearby.

Even Minister Donnelly noticed this absurdity. He told the Seanad: “If 100 m safe access zones were to be created in somewhere like Dublin city around every pharmacy, GP and family planning clinic, etc., then we would end up in a situation where we could not have legitimate protest or demonstrations.”, he said.

Independent Senators Sharon Keoghan and Ronan Mullen tabled some amendments to the Bill but they were all rejected. One amendment would have allowed discussion of abortion in nearby places such as a coffee shop without thereby incurring a possible criminal prosecution. Another proposal would have removed prayer and counselling from the list of actions the Bill proscribes.

Since the abortion law passed in December 2018, the Government has promised to introduce some form of censorship around hospitals and GP clinics where terminations take place.  Nonetheless, such legislation has been postponed because “the previous Minister was presented with a significant amount of legal opinion which said that this type of provision was unnecessary and unconstitutional or would have too much of a chilling effect on civil liberties.” Minister Donnelly said. “An Garda Síochána informed my predecessor and the Department at the time that these powers, this law and the fulfilment of this promise was not necessary.“

In 2019, Leo Varadkar who was then Taoiseach, said that a law on exclusion zones was running into legal difficulties regarding constitutional rights to ‘free speech’ and ‘peaceful protest’.

Such legislation is still part of the Programme for Government but Minister Donnelly recognised how difficult it is to limit the expression of legitimate opinions on abortion without pushing up against civil liberties. One of the problems is that, “An Garda Síochána said it did not need this measure and had very strong advice stating that it was not necessary, would not be constitutional, would not survive a challenge and so forth. I have given very clear instruction to the Department to find solutions to the very serious challenges.”, Minister Donnelly stressed.

In the North, meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Assembly has already passed a new law that makes illegal to offer pro-life assistance near hospitals or clinics. Any attempt to influence a pregnant woman around “protected premises” is deemed a criminal offence.

The island of Ireland, having recently permitted abortion on very wide-ranging grounds, is now moving severely limit the freedom to protest in ways contemplated in few other countries.

Oireachtas Committee told harsh facts of life about commercial surrogacy

Officials from three Government Departments have expressed great doubt about the possibility of legislating for the recognition of international commercial surrogacy contracts in Ireland. Besides practical difficulties, it would create a double standard if commercial surrogacy, which is banned here in Ireland, is tolerated when it happens abroad.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on international commercial surrogacy, which had its first hearing last week, is addressing two main issues: the retrospective recognition of parentage for children who have already been born abroad from a surrogate mother, and the legal status of future arrangements.

The Committee wondered whether something should be added to the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Bill that is currently under scrutiny in the Oireachtas, or if a separate piece of legislation is needed instead. Bar Senator Sharon Keogan, no-one on the Committee appears to be against commercial surrogacy in principle despite that the fact in Europe only Ukraine, Belarus and Russia permit it. Other countries regard it as womb-renting.

Officials from the three Departments (Justice, Health and Children) which appeared before the Committee reminded members of these facts. They said that no other country regulates surrogacy abroad as the State has no control and cannot legislate on what happens outside its jurisdiction. 

A representative from the Department of Children also told the politicians that he was “not aware of any EU Member State which has legislated specifically for their own citizens engaging in surrogacy in another jurisdiction. Rather, the norm appears to be that existing family law is utilised and adapted to deal with specific cases.”

This is also what currently happens in Ireland, but the Committee wants to create an easy pathway for surrogacy abroad.

The same representative warned that “international commercial surrogacy does raise concerns about the commodification of children, exploitation of women in poorer countries, the risk of child trafficking and the child’s right to know their identity.”

The Department of Health representatives said that they are “primarily concerned to ensure that any proposals that may emerge do not undermine the principles of the policy in respect of domestic surrogacy as reflected in the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, or create a conflicting policy landscape”, whereby we ban commercial surrogacy here, but recognise it overseas.

The same safeguards to prevent the exploitation of women and children, and even of the commissioning couples, should be in place abroad as domestically but this is almost impossible to achieve. "How do you get assurance that standards are being applied?", asked Andrew Munro from the Department of Justice.

Some members of the Committee suggested a solution along the lines of international adoptions, where Irish couples can adopt children only from countries that guarantee good practice. But, unlike with adoption, there is no international convention on surrogacy, there is no international framework to rely on.

Speaking about surrogacy, Andrew Munro from the Department of Justice told the Committee: “We have seen some very difficult examples in the past where … a lot of people got exploited by bad actors, where the egg that was purportedly supplied by a purported donor was not the egg. The child given to the intending parents had no genetic link”.

He added there had been cases where the surrogate mother was “spirited away over a border immediately after birth,” or a birth certificate provided by local authorities falsely "named the intending father as father despite the child having none of his genetic material”.

Conor O’Mahony, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, also spoke to the Committee, but he came down more on the side of facilitating commercial surrogacy.  He criticised the Government for ignoring his report on children’s rights in the context of surrogacy. If enacted without considerable amendments, he claimed, the Bill will be against the best interest of children in many ways.

Unlike the officials from the various Government Departments, Professor O’Mahony believes that international surrogacy can be regulated in the AHR Bill. He proposes that intending parents should “apply to the High Court for parentage and parental responsibility, as well as a grant of nationality and citizenship to the child, subject to satisfying a range of prescribed criteria.” He didn't clarified if the prescribed criteria should be the same as for domestic surrogacy.

This is probably what the Committee will recommend but it will create tension with the Government as it will delay the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill and its implementation, aside from the many inherent and unavoidable ethical problems created by commercial surrogacy.

Europe’s growing anti-Christian intolerance problem

 

Violence against Christians in Europe is both unrecognised and underestimated, says a major new report. Secular intolerance and Islamist physical violence are two main threats to religious freedom, but they often downplayed by media.

The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) looks at five European countries where the rights of Christians are under most pressure, namely France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The Vienna-based organisation found that in 2019-20 anti-Christian incidents, including murder, have increased in frequency. In France, three Christians were killed by Islamists and many more were injured in 2019-20.

According to the report, the strongest secular trend threatening the exercise of religious freedom aims at marginalising Christians from the public sphere. Even in countries that have a reputation for being tolerant, such as Sweden, Christians are practically excluded from some professions because of the lack of the right to conscientious objection. Doctors and nurses, for instance, are forced to participate to abortion.

All five countries covered by the report were found to have problems with the protection of freedom of speech. Self-censorship is becoming more frequent in the public square, because of the fear of negative consequences.  This problem is exacerbated by sensationalist and religious-illiterate media that distort or misrepresent the history and the views of Christians, who are frequently mocked or disproportionally criticised.

The United Kingdom is the country with the most cases of legal prosecutions for “hate speech”. Workers have been sanctioned or dismissed for defending the traditional Christian teaching on marriage or on sexuality. Even Biblical quotes have been seen as hateful on social media and reported to the police. (We saw a particularly drastic case of this in Finland recently. Fortunately, the accused person, a former Government Minister, was acquitted.)

The introduction of “censorship zones” around abortion clinics by some local authorities in the UK and Spain has also limited the possibility of prayer and offering help. The same is now set to happen in Northern Ireland, and it appears to be on the cards in the South as well.

Parental rights in education have been limited, particularly in the area of teaching sex education. Students are refused the possibility of opting out of classes that contravene their religious and moral convictions. This is in contrast to the approach towards religious education, where opt-outs are strongly protected, and rightly so. In France, students and teachers are prevented any public display of religious sentiments or symbols but in all countries Christians feel they cannot freely express their views without negative consequences.

The persecution of former Muslims was a main concern in France and Germany. Those who convert to Christianity face hostility by their families and communities of origin, in the form of rejection, threats, physical violence. This happens in hotspot areas, particularly in neighbourhoods under the influence of radical Islam.

Even in areas where Christians are a majority, more and more frequently churches are been attacked, sometimes burned, and celebrations are been interrupted. Vandalism against religious building is also common.

Unlike other parts of the world, intolerance against Christian is a new phenomenon in Western Europe and no proper substantial research has been conducted so far.

The report formulates a number of recommendations to the governments but also to the human rights institutions and to members of society. Firstly, discrimination against Christian should be recognised and properly monitored. Legislation should not limit the rights of Christians, particularly in the public square. Converts should be protected. Negative stereotyping should be avoided and the public representation of the history and beliefs of Christians should be more balanced and truthful, also through the promotion of religious literacy.