Ireland Gains Freedom

Ireland Is Made A Free State

100 years ago

Ireland in 1902

Remarkable film footage of the people and city of Cork in Ireland taken in 1902.

Irish Bishop Backs Female Priests as Diocese Votes to Ordain Women

KILLALA, Ireland (ChurchMilitant.com) - An Irish bishop has committed himself to a specially devised delegation process for ordaining female priests after 69% of Catholics in his diocese voted in favor of the ordination of women.

The vote was part of a "listening process" initiated by Bp. John Fleming of the Killala diocese in north Mayo and west Sligo, after an analysis of clergy numbers indicated that the 22 parishes of the diocese would be served by three to six priests by 2037.

One thousand and five hundred people across the diocese were surveyed on a range of questions as part of Bp. Fleming's "Placing Hope in Faith" project. The feedback was processed by the Institute for Action Research and turned into proposals that were voted on by a representative diocesan assembly.

The 300-strong diocesan assembly, which included delegates from the 22 parishes, voted on a range of issues, while 120 people participated in 10 focus groups, in the second phase.

Eighty percent voted in favor of women deacons, 69% supported women priests, 85% supported married priests and 81% cast their ballot supporting married priests returning to active ministry.

The assembly also voted 86% in favor of changing the Church's teaching on homosexuality to reflect the inclusion of all people regardless of sexual orientation, marital status or family status.

Read the rest here.

Merry Christmas from Ireland

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), the Republic of Ireland’s version of Planned Parenthood, will begin aborting babies January 7, reported the Irish Examiner. The legalization of the murderous procedure in the predominantly Catholic nation came after Ireland’s president signed legislation passed in December by Ireland’s parliament — which was responding to a referendum earlier in 2018 by which Ireland’s citizens voted by a two-to-one margin to repeal their constitution’s Eighth Amendment protecting the right to life of unborn children.

Source

Ex President of Ireland claims baptizing infants is a violation of their human rights

Details.

It's getting real folks. There was a time when I dismissed warnings about a coming persecution as hysteria. I don't anymore. In Australia they just passed a law requiring priests to report any confession of child sex abuse. The general hostility on the part of the secular left to Christianity that goes back decades, is reaching the point of visceral hatred. And in some parts of the world they are in firm control of the state.

Irish PM Says Catholic Hospitals Will Be Forced to Abort Children

Just weeks after a lopsided, groundbreaking vote struck down Ireland’s constitutional ban on legal abortion, the country’s Taoiseach signaled the broader moral and legal implications of this sea change in a once deeply Catholic nation.

“It will not … be possible for publicly funded hospitals, no matter who their patron or owner is,” Leo Varadkar told the Dáil, “to opt out of providing these necessary services which will be legal in this state once this legislation is passed by the Dáil [the lower house of the Irish legislature] and Seanad [senate].”

Britain’s Catholic Herald reported today that two large hospitals in Dublin are owned by religious orders: the Sisters of Charity’s St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and the Sisters of Mary’s Mater Hospital. Both, along with other Catholic medical institutions, will soon confront the full reality of abortion on demand.

In a June 14 column for National Review entitled, “In Ireland, What’s Legal Is Now Mandatory,” Michael Brendan Doughterty noted that NRO had “predicted in its editorial on the referendum that victory for Repeal would be swiftly followed by attempts to coerce Catholic institutions to provide abortion. Now Varadkar has promised as much.”

At present, the Irish government is preparing legislation to allow abortion on demand for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy — and in special cases, for up to 24 weeks.

Read the rest here.

Ireland's Apostasy

In the space of a generation, Ireland has gone from one of Europe's most Catholic countries to essentially a pagan state that has replaced the Sacrifice of the Altar with the sacrifice of its children.

Irish Catholic Priests Statement on the Forthcoming Referendum on Legalizing Abortion

Friday 4thMay 2018

In the midst of the debate and discussion in our country about the forthcoming referendum to repeal the 8thAmendment of the Constitution, we, the leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests, issue the following statement.

As an association representing Catholic priests we fully endorse the Catholic teaching that all human life, from beginning to end, is sacred, and that every human person shares in the fundamental right to life.

We are also aware, and are constantly reminded in our ministry, that human life is complex, throwing up situations that are more often grey than black and white and that demand from us a sensitive, non-judgemental, pastoral approach. Also, as leadership of an association made up of men who are unmarried and without children of our own, we are not best placed to be in any way dogmatic on this issue.

We do not wish to tell anyone how they should vote. But we encourage both ourselves and any citizens who may be interested in our viewpoint, to do the best we can to acquaint ourselves with exactly what we are being asked to vote for, and what the possible consequences of our vote may be. Having done that to the best of our ability, and following it with the, often painful and difficult, task of consulting our conscience, let us cast our vote.

A vote cast in accordance with each person’s conscience, whatever the result, deserves the respect of all.

There is undoubtedly a moral content to this referendum, but as with many other issues, there are also social, political and pastoral dimensions. For that reason we are concerned that some Catholic parishes are allowing their pulpits to be used by campaigners during Mass. As there are, among faithful, Church-going Catholics, a great variety of opinions on this vote, we believe this is inappropriate and insensitive and will be regarded by some as an abuse of the Eucharist.

We believe it would be better if this practice ceased for the rest of the campaign.

We wish the Irish people well in this immensely important decision awaiting all of us. The leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests will have no further engagement in this debate.

From here.

"The fort is betrayed, even by those who should have defended it." -Bishop John Fisher (canonized martyr in the Roman Catholic Church)

Post Posting Note: It has been brought to my attention that the group that drafted this un-Christian drivel is decidedly left leaning (by which I suspect is meant "heretical"). In any case I think it irrelevant. These priests have disgraced themselves and their church. And their bishops are even worse because they don't have the stones to suppress this heretical organization and suspend every cleric who supports this abomination.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Unreformable Ireland? The Failure of the Reformation in Ireland

What makes Ireland so interesting for Reformation studies is that it stands out as the classic exception to the general rule of ciuis regio, eius religio. Despite the endeavours of successive monarchs to extend the English Reformation to Ireland since 1534, by the end of the sixteenth century the number of Irish Protestants was reckoned by contemporaries at between 40 and 120 individuals. In Dublin, the capital of Ireland, only twenty Irish householders attended Protestant church services, and only four of those would receive communion by Protestant rites. By any criteria the failure of the Reformation in Ireland was comprehensive and absolute.

Because the failure of the Reformation in Ireland was so overwhelming it had long seemed inevitable, and historians had generally seen no need to try to explain it before Brendan Bradshaw’s exploratory essay, “Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland,” was published in 1978. However, that article prompted Nicholas Canny’s rejoinder of the following year: “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: une question mal posée?” Not only did Canny declare the question as misconceived, he presented a new paradigm for Irish Reformation studies. He claimed that until the 1590s the Reformation in Ireland was characterized by a “quiescent phase” during which the Irish were not bothered about the theological debates that concerned Christians elsewhere in Europe. He asserted that throughout that period they were as liable to be absorbed into the Protestant Church of Ireland as to be lost forever to the Counter Reformation. He argued that the Reformation was rejected at the fin de siècle, not for any religious reasons but because it came to be seen as merely another facet of an English government program for Ireland that was characterized by despotism, militarism, and Anglicization. Tellingly, though, it was not made clear how political alienation from English governance could suddenly have inspired a general commitment to Counter-Reformation Catholicism after more than six decades of supposed religious indifference. 

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Ireland in 1902

A fascinating glimpse of life in Ireland around the turn of the previous century. Most of the video was shot in Cork with the last few minutes in Wexford. It's as close to a time machine as we are likely to find.

Ireland Goes Protestant

After enduring centuries of Protestant persecution, Ireland effectively just voted to become Anglican. And they did it with a tacit nod from the Roman Catholic hierarchy who did next to nothing to oppose this with many clergy openly supporting gay marriage.

Six held over 'dissident IRA plot to kill Prince Charles'

Six men have been arrested in the Republic of Ireland after police discovered bomb making equipment close to where Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall are due to visit next week.

Explosives and weapons were recovered at various locations as Irish police carried out more than 20 raids aimed at disrupting dissident Republican activity.

Read the rest here.

The Irish Orphanage Horror Story...

800 babies in a septic tank? Yeah, it looks like a media driven hoax. It's all over the internet but not surprisingly it's getting scant attention in the MSM. Here's just one of the many articles debunking it.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Feast of St. Patrick Enlightener of Ireland

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my fellow Irish in blood and spirit.

N. Ireland: Dozens Injured in Anti-Catholic Riots

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Protestant hardliners attacked lines of Belfast riot police Friday as Northern Ireland's annual mass marches by the Orange Order brotherhood reached a furious, chaotic end with running street battles at several conflict zones.

In north Belfast, police in flame-retardant suits and helmets deployed a half-dozen armored cars to block a road so that Protestant Orangemen could not march past the edge of Ardoyne, a militant Catholic district that has become the most bitterly contested spot on the city map.

Men jumped on top of the armored barricade and, as hundreds of marchers and supporters formed a sea of often alcohol-fueled fury behind them, wielded pipes, golf clubs, wood planks and even ceremonial swords to vandalize the police vans.

Emboldened, some threw bottles and bricks point-blank into police lines. Many in the mob cheered as one policeman, struck and knocked semiconscious, was dragged to safety by colleagues.

Read the rest here.

Irish Archbishop Warns Pro-Abortion Pols of Excommunication

The next Catholic primate of Ireland has said politicians who “knowingly introduce legislation aiding and abetting abortion” should not “approach [a priest] looking for communion”.

In the clearest statement so far on the church’s position Archbishop Eamon Martin, who will succeed Cardinal Seán Brady next year, said legislators who support abortion are excommunicating themselves.

“You cannot regard yourself as a person of faith and support abortion,” Martin said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “You cannot believe you are with your church and directly help someone to procure an abortion. This includes medical professionals and the legislators.

Read the rest here. (Subscription required)

Ireland: Justice Minister proposes law requiring Catholic priests to divulge confessions

The Irish Justice Minister has evoked outrage from the Catholic Church by proposing 5-year prison sentences for priests who fail to report sex abuse of minors if they hear about it in the confessional.

Alan Shatter’s mandatory reporting bill, introduced Wednesday, will make it a criminal offence to fail to disclose information to police which would “assist in prosecuting a person who commits a serious offence against a child or vulnerable adult.” The bill confirms fears that the government of Ireland will attempt to force priests to break the seal of the confessional, an idea that caused an uproar when it bruited about the Dail last summer.

A statement from the Vatican last August made it clear that under no circumstances whatever may a priest reveal what he learns in confession, even if a penitent confesses to criminal activity.

Read the rest here.

I don't think there are many Orthodox in Ireland. But to the extent there are any this would obviously effect them as well.

Feast of St. Patrick Enlightener of Ireland

A blessed feast of St. Patrick to all my fellow Irish in blood and spirit. Erin go bragh!