{"id":2603,"date":"2007-03-12T11:28:29","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T11:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/varia-10.html"},"modified":"2007-03-12T11:28:29","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T11:28:29","slug":"varia-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/varia-10.html","title":{"rendered":"Varia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in October, I linked to, and you folks discussed a radio debate between one David Quinn and Richard Dawkins.<\/a><\/p>\n

Quinn has gone on to begin the "Iona Institute" in Ireland – a ZENIT interview with him about the Institute is here:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

A new think tank in Ireland is making the case that marriage and religious practice are vital contributors to a healthy, well-functioning civil society. <\/p>\n

The Iona Institute for Religion and Society, directed by religious and social affairs commentator David Quinn, was launched last month to disseminate evidence-based research in favor of the importance of strong families and religious values in Irish society. <\/p>\n

Quinn, one of the best-known religious affairs correspondents for the Irish Independent, comments in this interview with us on the situation of the family and religious practice in Ireland. <\/p>\n

Q: Why did you decide to found the Iona Institute? <\/p>\n

Quinn: The chief reason is that there was no organization in Ireland making known the evidence that both marriage and religious practice have numerous social and personal benefits. Nor was there any organization dedicated to devising policies that might promote and strengthen marriage. <\/p>\n

Marriage is under severe pressure from individualistic social norms and what might be called "the family diversity" view which maintains that all families are basically the same and there is no reason for the state to favor one over the other. <\/p>\n

Check out the Iona Institute website:<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Melanie Bettanelli has reason for cautious optimism, thank God.<\/a><\/p>\n

Congratulations to bloggers Dave and Amy Pawlak (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Milwaukee last year) on the birth of their baby over the weekend!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in October, I linked to, and you folks discussed a radio debate between one David Quinn and Richard Dawkins. Quinn has gone on to begin the "Iona Institute" in Ireland – a ZENIT interview with him about the Institute is here: A new think tank in Ireland is making the case that marriage and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nVaria - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/varia-10.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Varia - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back in October, I linked to, and you folks discussed a radio debate between one David Quinn and Richard Dawkins. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}