Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.
ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Irish Catholic Massgoers worried, dismayed
after 2-1 landslide vote to repeal abortion ban
'It's extraordinary the way the campaign focused so much on 'me, me, me',
the rights of the mother, and very little mention of the unborn child'
By GREGORY KATZ
DUBLIN, May 27, 2018 (AP) — Irish Catholics attending Sunday Mass were disappointed with the result of a referendum in which voters opted to legalize abortion and think it reflects the weakening of the Church — a situation that was unthinkable in Ireland a generation ago.
There was no mention of the referendum during the sermon at St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral, [!!! Could there be a more emblematic exhibition of the Irish Church's appalling disengagement from the electoral battle? Of course, it echoes the reigning pope's consistent silence on Italian legislation directly opposing the Church's pro-life, pro-family and anti-gender ideology/anti-homosexualism positions. Not that he ever deigned to say a single word about the Irish referendum either!], but it was weighing heavily on the minds of some worshippers as they left the Mass in central Dublin.
Ireland voted by a roughly two-to-one margin Friday to end a constitutional ban on abortion, and parliament is expected to approve a more liberal set of laws governing the termination of pregnancies.
Some worshippers said the overwhelming victory of abortion rights activists seeking the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the constitution reflects a weakening of the Catholic Church’s historic influence and fills them with dread for Ireland’s future.
“I think the ‘yes’ vote was an anti-Church vote,” said Annemarie McCarrick, referring to the “yes” vote in favor of ending the constitutional ban.
The 52-year-old lecturer said on the cathedral steps that a series of sex abuse scandals had undermined the influence of the Church in Ireland. She said the Church had in recent weeks taken a “quiet” stand against repeal, but hadn’t been able to sway people.
“I am religious but the Church has definitely lost influence here because of the scandals,” she said. “The people will not take direction from the Church anymore. It’s hard for the Church to have credibility.”
Recent census figures show a small decline in the number of Catholics in Ireland, but it remains by far the dominant religion.
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Frank Gaynor, a 75-year-old retiree, said after the Mass that he never imagined the vote in favor of abortion rights would be so lopsided.
He said he was troubled by the way the “yes” campaign used the case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who died of sepsis during a prolonged miscarriage after being denied an abortion in Galway in 2012, to drum up support for repeal.
“I was disappointed to see the tragic death of Savita being shamelessly used as an excuse for introducing abortion into a country,” he said. “That was a sepsis issue that was mishandled. Not an Eighth Amendment issue.”
He felt alienated by the campaign: “It’s extraordinary the way the campaign focused so much on ‘me, me, me,’ the rights of the mother, and very little mention of the unborn child. That was sidelined.”
With the vote decided, attention is turning to Ireland’s parliament, which will make new laws to govern abortions.
The referendum vote ended a strong pro-life regime enacted in 1983 that required doctors to regard the rights of a fetus, from the moment of conception, as equal to the rights of the mother.
In practice, it meant Irish women had to travel abroad for terminations.
The nationwide rejection of the amendment represented a growing tolerance on social issues in the traditionally Roman Catholic country.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar hailed the vote as bringing a new era to Ireland.
He said it will be remembered as “the day Ireland stepped out from under the last of our shadows and into the light. The day we came of age as a country. The day we took our place among the nations of the world.”
His government will propose that abortions be permissible in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
It isn’t yet clear what strategy abortion opponents will use in parliament in light of the unexpectedly large vote in favor of repeal. Some opposition figures have indicated they won’t block legislation because they must respect the public will.
The decisive outcome of the landmark referendum was cast as a historic victory for women’s rights. Exit polls indicated that the repeal was endorsed in urban and rural areas alike, with strong support from both men and women.
Backing for repeal was highest among young voters, including many who returned from jobs or universities in continental Europe to vote, but was also high among every age group except those 65 or older.
Since 1983, the Eighth Amendment had forced women seeking to terminate pregnancies to go abroad for abortions, bear children conceived through rape or incest, or take risky illegal measures at home.
Across the land of St. Patrick,
night has fallen
by K. V. Turley
May 26, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – This September, Pope Francis is due to visit Ireland almost exactly 39 years after the first reigning pontiff set foot on Irish soil.
The current Holy Father would, however, be visiting a country greatly changed from the one to which his predecessor came.
The reception Pope St. John Paul II received was what one would expect from a Catholic nation, especially one with a history of persecution. - It is estimated that approximately 1,250,000 people, one quarter of the population of the island — one third of the Republic’s population — attended the visit’s opening Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
- More than 250,000 more attended a service near the Irish Border later that same evening — most of those present travelling from British-controlled Northern Ireland.
- Later again, hundreds of thousands lined the streets of Dublin as a night time motorcade made its way to the Presidential Residence.
The next two days were to be similar in their exuberance, for this was more than just a “welcome”; it was closer to a national celebration, and one that seemed to say that, in spite of everything, the Faith had not only survived but had triumphed.
The visit was deemed a great success, measured as it was in cheers and bunting.
High-ranking Irish clerics congratulated themselves, and the Irish faithful, on the Papal visit. It was to be a false dawn, however.
The 1979 visit marks an ending. It was thereafter resolved, determined by forces seen and unseen, that the moment had come, Catholic Ireland should fall. Fifteen hundred years of fidelity were to be broken. On that September day, as the papal jet’s engines started up, and the final salute of the military guard of honor was taken, what was then not fully understood was that the last act of one story was ending just as the first of a very different one was beginning, appropriately, with the departure of the Vicar of Christ.
In southern Ireland, when Pope St. John Paul visited, abortion was criminal, contraception unavailable, and marriage was between one man and one woman for life, divorce being illegal. Church attendance rates remained among the highest in Europe. The Church controlled almost all schooling, and much of the medical and social service provision. The Irish State was Catholic in all but name; as testified by its Constitution, specifically its Preamble, invoking as it did the nation’s Christian heritage: “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred…”
All looked to be in order. It proved an illusion.
The end of the papal visit marked the beginning of years rich in disaster for the Church in Ireland.
- In the North, war and civil strife continued, with the Pope’s words for a cessation of violence roundly ignored; and, even when at last a cease-fire did come, the peace was cruel with its ghosts later leaving unquiet graves to wander abroad seeking justice.
- There was stagnation in the public discourse, as year after year things went ill socially, and little better economically.
- Throughout it all, the Church was increasingly moved to the margins. In any event, it was to make little difference, as scandal infected some of the clergy, with the consequence that what was preached from the pulpit was publicly ridiculed.
The Irish media smelled blood and attacked what it had once feared. All priests were tarnished regardless of innocence or guilt. Silenced, the Church stood and watched as a “new Ireland” was now erected, one very different from anything seen before.
On the final day of the visit to Ireland, Pope St. John Paul spoke of a clear choice between Christ and the world. On that overcast day in 1979, he presented Ireland with that choice, one between Christ and all the empty promises of the prince of this world. It was to be the last day of his visit, and very nearly the last for Catholic Ireland.
By the next year, the Irish Parliament had legalized contraception. It was a start of a process, some might say a “war,” and, by the end, the forces of “progress” had won every battle. Today, some 30 years after Pope John Paul had flown out of Ireland, the nation’s social fabric looks just as much of a moral mess as any other European country. Ireland has indeed made her choice.
Perhaps, in hindsight, it is no surprise that, as the Faith declined, prosperity increased. And while church attendance plummeted and parishes closed, crime rose, as did family breakdown, equally so illegitimacy, woes of differing shades now began to gather. But then, when things looked as if they couldn’t get any worse, there came the coup de grâce.
The latest and most decisive battle of this “war” was fought on 25 May 2018 (the day of the referendum on repealing the abortion ban). Such was the scale of defeat Catholic Ireland ceased to exist.
From now on, each year on that date, a bell should toll as, dressed in black, the priests of Ireland ascend to the altar before offering the “funeral” Mass for the spiritual death of a nation and to make reparation for the extinction of untold Irish children who were not allowed to see the light of day.
For now, as the snakes return once more, across the land of St. Patrick night has fallen.
Rorate caeli has reprinted a post-referendum analysis by Roberto de Mattei after Ireland voted for same-sex 'marriage in May 2015 to comment on the debacle for the pro-life cause in Ireland this week.
IRELAND: A 'post-mortem' examination
May 26, 2018
Almost exactly three years ago, in May 2015, following the "same-sex marriage" referendum in Ireland, Roberto de Mattei made his "post-mortem examination" of the formerly Catholic powerhouse.
On this sad Saturday, as vote tallies confirm that an overwhelming majority of Irish voters chose to remove the 8th amendment of the Irish Constitution, we take a moment to revisit his piece.
What did the 8th amendment say exactly? These words:
The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
Beautiful, noble, sound, correct, Catholic: all that Ireland has ceased to be.
IRELAND: A 'post-mortem' examination
by Roberto de Mattei
May 27, 2015
In his masterpiece “The Soul of the Apostolate”, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), Trappist Abbot of Sept-Fons, expressed this maxim: “A holy priest coincides with a fervent populace; a fervent priest - a pious populace; a pious priest - an honest populace; an honest priest - an impious populace” (Italian edition, Rome 1967, p. 64).
If it is true that there is always a degree less between the spiritual life of the clergy and the faithful they serve, then after the same-sex 'marriage' vote in Dublin on May 22, we should add: “An impious priest coincides with an apostate populace.”
Ireland in fact, is the first country where the legal recognition of homosexual unions has been introduced not from the top but from the bottom, through a popular referendum; yet Ireland is also one of the oldest Countries with a deep-rooted Catholic Tradition, where the influence of the clergy is still relatively strong in part of the population.
It is no novelty that the “yes” to “homosexual marriage” was supported by all the parties, the right, the left and the center; it is not surprising that all of the media sustained the LGTB campaign, nor that there has been massive financing from abroad on behalf of this campaign; the facts foreseen, were, that, of 60% of the population who voted, only 37% of the citizens expressed their “yes” and that the government had skillfully shuffled their cards introducing a law in January 2015, permitting adoption by homosexual couples, prior to the recognition of pseudo-homosexual-marriage.
What provokes the greatest scandal are the silences, the omissions and the complicities by the Irish priests and bishops throughout the electoral campaign.
One example suffices. Before the elections, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diamund Martin, declared that he would have voted against homosexual marriage but wouldn’t have told Catholics how to vote (LifeSiteNews.com, May 21). After the vote, he declared on Irish National Television that: “the evidence cannot be denied” and that the Church in Ireland “needs a reality-check”. In merit of what happened Monsignor Martin added: “It isn’t only the outcome of a campaign for a “yes” and a “no” but it attests to a much deeper phenomenon”, therefore “ we need to review the pastoral care of youth: the referendum was won with the votes of the young and 90% of the young who voted attended Catholic Schools.” (www.corriere.it/esteri/ May 24,2015)
This position reflects, in general (apart from a few exceptions) the Irish clergy who have adopted the line that Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference in Italy, had hoped for: to avoid polemics and clashes at all costs [which is, of course, the Bergoglio line, of which Galantino has been a most fervent and proactive promoter].
Which means, let’s set aside the preaching of the Gospel and the values of the Faith and Catholic Tradition, in order to look for a point of encounter and compromise with the adversaries.
And yet on March 18th 2010, Benedict XVI in his “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland” had invited the Irish clergy and people to return “to the ideals of holiness, charity and transcendent wisdom”, “which in the past made Europe great and can still re-found her” (no.3) and to “draw inspiration from the riches of a great religious and cultural tradition” (no.12), which has not faded, even if “fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values” (no. 4) is opposed to it.
In that historic “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland”, Benedict XVI notes that in the 70s, there was "a significant tendency on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.” This tendency is the same one we find today.
It has been the cause of a process of degradation, which, since the years of the Second Vatican Council, like an avalanche, has swept away Catholic customs and institutions. If the Irish today, even by staying Catholic for the most part, abandon the faith, the cause is not only the loss of prestige and consensus of the Church following the scandals of sexual abuse.
The true cause is the moral and cultural surrender to the world on the part of their pastors, who accept this degradation as sociological evidence, without posing the problem of their own responsibilities. In this sense their behavior has been impious, lacking in mercy and offensive with regard to religion, even if not formally heretical.
Yet every Catholic who voted “yes”, and thus, the majority of Irish Catholics who went to the ballot boxes, have stained themselves with apostasy. The apostasy of a people whose constitution still opens with an invocation to the Most Holy Trinity.
Apostasy is a much graver sin than impiety, as it involves an explicit repudiation of Catholic faith and morals. However, the heaviest responsibility for this public sin lies with the pastors who have encouraged and tolerated it with their behavior. [All this bolsters my personal opinion that Bergoglio's anti-Catholic statements and actions are most properly described as apostate, not heretical, and to paraphrase De Mattei, apostasy is a much graver sin than heresy. What can be more apostate than founding your own church, de facto, as Bergoglio is doing on the back, as it were, of the one, holy Catholic and apostolic Church that he has forced to prostration in order to work his 'reforms' - which has really meant building a church, the church of Bergoglio, in his image and likeness! Hoodwinking everyone, of course, because he is committing his apostasy while being the pope, de facto and de jure, elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church.]
Forty-eight hours after the vote, the main exponents of the German, Swiss and French Episcopal Conferences, under the leadership of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, gathered together in Rome to plan their action in view of the upcoming Synod [the second Bergoglio 'family synod'].
According to the journalist present at the meetings, “marriage and divorce”, “sexuality as an expression of love” were the themes discussed. (“La Repubblica” May 26, 2015). The line is the one mapped out by Cardinal Kasper: secularization is an irreversible process which pastoral reality has to adapt to.
And for Archbishop Bruno Forte, he who asked for “the codification of homosexual rights” at the 2014 Synod, and who has been confirmed by the Pope as special Secretary to the Synod on the Family, “it is a cultural process of forced secularization in which Europe is fully involved.” (“Corriere della Sera”, May 25, 2015).
There is a final question that cannot be evaded: Pope Francis’s sepulchral silence on Ireland. [The same sepulchral silence in recent months and weeks on the abortion referendum!]
During the Mass for the opening of the Caritas Assembly on May 12, 2015, the Pope thundered against “the powerful of the world” reminding them that “God will judge them one day, and will show if they have really tried to provide food for Him in every person and if they have worked so that the environment is not destroyed, so that it may produce this food”.
On November 21, 2014, commenting on the excerpt from the Gospel where Jesus throws out the merchants from the Temple, the Pope launched his anathema against a Church that thinks only about business affairs and commits “the sin of scandal”.
Francis often rails against corruption, i.e., the traffic in slaves and arms along with the vanity of power and money. On June 11, 2014, in reference to corrupt politicians - those who exploit “slave-work” - and the “merchants of death”, the Pope piously said, “May the fear of God make them understand that one day it will all end and they will have to give an account to God.”
Yet isn’t the application of laws regarding the vice against nature incomparably graver than the sins that the Pope recalls so frequently? Why didn’t the Pope launch a vigorous and heartfelt appeal to the Irish in the days prior to the vote, reminding them that the violation of the Divine and Natural Law is a social sin which the people and their pastors will one day have to give account to God for? With this silence, has he not also been an accomplice to this scandal? [Mutatis mutandis, we can say the same about his choice not e to be engaged at all in the pro-abortion referendum!]
Ireland votes pro-abortion
and the heavens respond
May 27, 2018
The Irish constitution begins in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, stating:
“In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Éire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ . . .”
… vote to kill the unborn.”
In 2015, for Trinity Sunday, the Irish voted for same-sex mockery of marriage.
This year, 2018, Ireland voted for abortion for Trinity Sunday.
Also, this year, as reported by the BBC, terrible lightning storms raged between Dublin and London, the city to which Irish women went for abortions until now. There is a piece with amazing photos here:
www.bbc.com/news/uk-44269304
Around 15,000 lightning strikes were recorded in four hours on Saturday night, BBC Weather said.
Ireland chooses death
May 29, 2018
Editor’s note: It is not our usual policy to print an entire press release in full, but rarely have we seen one so expertly hit the mark. Our thanks to the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts and their executive director C.J. Doyle for this devastating analysis of the Irish vote to legalize abortion.
On Friday, May 25th, the citizens of the Republic of Ireland, in a national referendum, voted by a two to one majority to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which guaranteed the right to life of unborn children in that country. The referendum only removed the constitutional protection for pre-natal life. Statutory enabling legislation will still be required to actually legalize abortion in Ireland.
The government of Prime Minister — An Taoiseach — Leo Varadkar proposes the unrestricted procurement of abortion, (abortion on demand), for the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, and effectively unrestricted abortion, with the usual loopholes for the health of the mother, for up to twenty-four weeks. If passed, it would be the one of the most permissive abortion regimes in the European Union.
As the Taoiseach, the government, and all four major political parties in the Republic — Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour and Sinn Fein —support legalization, it is expected to pass in Dail Eireann, and the Seanad, by substantial majorities.
With a referendum turnout of 64.1%, 1,489,981 voters cast ballots in favor of repeal, while 723,632 voted to retain the amendment. The margin was 66.4% to 33.6%.
All four provinces and 25 out of 26 counties — Donegal was the exception — voted for repeal. In the nation’s capital city, Dublin, the repeal majority was in excess of 77%.
The Catholic Action League characterized the vote as “a portentous event, effecting civilizational change, and completing Ireland’s transition to a post-Christian society.” The League went on to say that it would result in “the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent, pre-born children, and the persecution of those who refuse to collaborate in this monstrous evil.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment:
On Bloody Friday, in what was both a tragedy and a crime, the people of Ireland, lead by their first homosexual prime minister, voted overwhelmingly to reject the Author of Life and embrace the Father of Lies.
After 16 centuries, and more than 60 generations, of Catholic Faith, Christian culture, and civilized morals, the Irish people have repudiated their religion, betrayed their heritage, scorned their ancestors, and abandoned their historic identity, only to descend into barbarism.
One notes with irony that 96 years after the independence of the country, the Irish have, once again, conformed to the values of their former colonial masters. With the Abortion Act of 1967, the United Kingdom — with the exception of the six counties of Northern Ireland —became one of the first western European countries to legalize abortion.
No court or parliament is responsible for this. Ireland’s decision is unprecedented. Even in Nazi Germany, a majority never voted for mass murder. Now, nearly one and half million people will have innocent blood on their hands.
While foreign money, a monolithically anti-Catholic media, and the pernicious influence of globalist elites in the EU and the UN had a significant impact on the outcome, one must, squarely, place much of the blame on a corrupt, ineffectual, and disproportionately homosexual Irish clergy, which discredited itself by tolerating predators in its ranks, and which offered only tepid resistance to the moral revolution which has now overtaken Ireland.
This vote marks the final end of Latin Christendom in the homeland of the Faith, Europe. The toxic mixture of the Sexual Revolution and Vatican II Catholicism has now deconstructed, in a little over fifty years, a civilization it took nearly two millenia to create.
Irish Americans need to reevaluate their traditional support for the unity of Ireland. Northern Ireland is now the only part of the British Isles where human life is fully protected. The pro-life Protestants of the North should be defended from the apostate Catholics of the Republic.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/06/2018 01:48]