Celebrant (Australia) celebrancy was established by the Australian Commonwealth Attorney General Lionel Murphy on 19 July 1973, when his first appointee, Mrs Lois D'Arcy, was categorised as a Civil Marriage Celebrant. Later, as civil marriage celebrants branched out into the performance of other ceremonies such as Funerals and Namings the term was shortened to Civil Celebrant. According to civil celebrant Dally Messenger III: The civil celebrant program is almost entirely the result of one man's vision. Murphy himself told me the story of how he was opposed by his own staff, the public service, his fellow members of parliament and officials of
Humanist Association of Ireland to a pilot programme called "Goodness me, Goodness you" on the grounds that it separated children into believers and non-believers at an early age. They said that faith classes should take place outside school hours. Humanist Association of Ireland The Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) is an Irish secular humanist organisation that was founded in 1993 to promote Humanism, which they describe as: an ethical philosophy of life, based on a concern for humanity in general, and for human individuals in particular. This view of life combines reason with compassion. It is for those people who base their interpretation of