Joe Duffy and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

For many people in Ireland, religion used to be synonymous with Sunday morning church worship. And that remains an important aspect of RTÉ's Religious output. But it's only one aspect.

Today, religion in Ireland is a much more hazy affair, incorporating diversity and doubt alongside - and sometimes in place of - the old certainties. It can be about belonging or believing and can involve passionate arguments that are as likely to take place around kitchen and pub tables as in churches.

Religion today can mean powerful stories of living faith - faith challenged, faith discovered or faith affirmed through experience.

And it can mean a vast array of activities that take place outside the doors of churches, mosques, synagogues and temples: grass-roots social projects and neighbourly acts; local traditions; rites of passage; history and heritage; music and arts; pilgrimages and prayers.

All of these elements are now to be found on Joe Duffy's Spirit Level, a live, weekly religious magazine series, at 5pm on Sunday evenings, on RTÉ One, from 3rd January to 7th February, 2010.

This week, Joe Duffy explores the ethics of euthanasia. The word means "Good death" in Greek, but to opponents, it means anything but.

A Life Not Worth Living

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in Ireland, which may be why 29 Irish people, including the Oscar-winning actress, Brenda Fricker, have now registered with the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas, for help in curtailing their lives, as and when they feel they are no longer worth living.

Brenda joins Joe live to explain her passionately held view that her life is hers alone to end. She hopes she would have the courage to help someone else to end their lives and certainly feels she has a right to end her own.

But does she? Dr Regina McQuillan is Medical Director of St Francis Hospice, Raheny, Co. Dublin, and feels that pro-euthanasia arguments are flawed. Firstly, she feels, if we agree with some sick people that their conditions somehow warrant suicide, then we put pressure on, and devalue, the lives of all others with those ailments. But also, it is now possible to control pain to such a degree that nobody should be unable to die without dignity.

Adding an extra dimension to their conversation, Joe shows them both a clip from a controversial Canadian documentary, The Suicide Tourist, in which an elderly couple, George and Betty, seek help from Dignitas in committing suicide together. George is frail, after 4 heart attacks, and just wants out, but Betty is in fine health. Her only reason for wanting to die is that she doesn't want to live without George. To her suicide is a right. Brenda agrees with her, but Dr McQuillan fears that this mindset might contribute to a general diminution of the value of human life.

The Suicide Tourist airs on RTE 1 at quarter past midnight on Wednesday, 8th February.

If you would like to discuss suicide-related issues, contact Samaritans, via their website: www.samaritans.org

Out of the Ashes...

Elsewhere in the programme, we join Bishop Colm O'Reilly, as he enters the burnt-out ruins of St Mel's Cathedral, Longford for the first time since the fire, which devastated the building on Christmas morning.

Surveryors have barely begun to assess the restoration challenge and for the moment, parishioners are having to use a nearby college for Masses. However, a month after the fire, there are signs of hope.

The Blessed Sacrament somehow survived the conflagration, as did statues of St Mel and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church's Harry Clark windows.

However, just as it was the people of Longford who built the cathedral in the first place, so it is to them that the Bishop is now looking for inspiration. They have come together as never before, firstly in grief, but now in a determination to rebuild their beloved cathedral.

Veil of Tears

This week, a French Parliamentary report recommended the banning of all Islamic dress that covers women's faces, in public buildings and on public transport. It was claimed that the burka and niqab are signs of fanaticism and oppression that are contrary ot the spirit of the French Republic. Others, however, have asked how the curtailment of religious freedom of expression can be compatible with "liberté, égalité et fraternité".

So, could it also happen in the Irish Republic. Should it - or do Irish principles of cultural tolerance and religious freedom make that impossible?

In studio, Joe is jioned by Dr Dornu Blythin, a jilbab-wearing Muslim GP, who sees her headgear as an expression of faith and no-one else's business; Brenda Fricker, a Sunday Times columnist; and Dr Mary Gilmartin, a social geographer at NUI Maynooth.

Operation Transfiguration

We catch up again with our two volunteers, currently attempting a New Year spiritual make-over with the help of Frances Tolton, a personal development coach and psychologist; and Dave Shipsey, a Buddhist and the founder or the Dan Tien Complementary Health Studio.

To find out more about Dave's work, visit the website: www.dan-tien.com

To find out more about Frances' work, visit her website at www.therainbowfactor.tv

Love and Haiti

No-one can fail to have been moved by the plight of the people of Haiti, but Joe hears how an Irish charity, Haven Partnership, already committed to helping the poorest of the poor there, has responded to the earthquake by promising to build 10,000 homes. Two volunteers, Niamh Mansfield and Peter Walsh, join Joe Duffy in studio to talk about their plans, including Niamh's fund-raiser at the Burlington Hotel Ballroom, on Wednesday 3rd February. To find our more about the charity or to volunteer, visit their website: www.havenpartnership.com

You can also find out more abou tthem by watching a documentary following George Hook to Haiti on the charity's last trip, in October. Hook On Haiti is on RTE One, at 10.35pm on Monday 8th February.

Finally, on the programme, watch out for Christian sou-singer, Joseph Fitzgerald, singing his beautiful song, DEEP.

If you can't watch the programme at 5pm on 24th January, you can see it on www.rte.ie/player or on this website, along with previous episodes.