Ireland’s New Religion

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Let us continue to pray earnestly for our Irish bishops as the evidence continues to grow of a renewed persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland, the like of which has not been since the Penal times. Although not yet violent, the signs are beginning to emerge that dissent from the new secular religion will not be tolerated for much longer and that ‘the old religion’ must give way to the new.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

“One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth stands for ever.

The sun rises, and goes down, and returns to his place: and there rising again, makes his round by the south, and turns again to the north: the spirit goes forward surveying all places round about, and returns to his circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea does not overflow: unto the place from whence the rivers come, they return, to flow again.

All things are hard: man cannot explain them by word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing.

What is it that has been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that has been done? The same that shall be done.

Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4-10)

I mention this in connection with the publication of the “Mother And Baby Homes Commission Of Investigation Final Report” which was presented by our Taoiseach on the 12th of January this year. I do not intend here to go into the disturbing details of the report but I want to look at something Hilaire Belloc said in his essay “The Historical Counter Attack”

Belloc notes:

“But the worst of all false methods, by which more than by any other is anti-Catholic history propagated today, the one which appeals most of all to the ignorant general reader and the one which it is most difficult to eliminate wholly even from the mind of the best instructed, is the method of reading modern times into the past.”

Belloc then speaks of certain atrocities in England’s past such as the burning of heretics under Queen Mary and mentions the fact that prisoners were regularly flogged in his own day and says, prophetically, referring to the floggings:

“These proceedings also may rouse such indignation in some future age (which will doubtless have much worse things of its own) as to stamp our age with atrocious cruelty, moral and physical.”

We live in an era where reason, sound judgement and leadership have all but disappeared. Anyone who seeks to take a critical look at government mandated narratives, be it on homosexual practices, abortion, covid-19, or mother and baby homes, risks being publicly excoriated and accused of all sorts of vile intentions. The public purveyors of tolerance and inclusion have no problem calling for those who disagree with their narrative to be punished and excluded from public debate and even from society.

Hilaire Belloc also tells us that “without a true philosophy – that is a true religion – true history cannot be written”

The Catholic understanding of human nature is the only true understanding. Man, created in the image and likeness of God, fell through original sin and is now tainted with an inclination towards evil. All of the problems in our world are caused by the sins of men.

In the area of human sexuality we find that intense physical pleasure is connected to the use of our sexual faculties. Fallen men desire to partake in this pleasure without restraint. But natural sexual activity has a direct consequence, the conception of a new human being. Since the beginning of time, men and women have sought ways to engage in pleasurable sexual activity whilst avoiding pregnancy. The solitary sin of what was called onanism; same-sex relations which cannot lead to pregnancy; ‘coitus interruptus’ and contraception. But men have failed, and will always fail, by all of these methods to prevent a certain percentage of unwanted pregnancies occurring. Such is our fallen nature.

In Ireland’s past, when a girl or woman became pregnant out of wedlock, this created a problem. The child needed to be looked after but there were limited means available in poorer times. A family might be struggling to put enough food on the table when their young daughter came home and announced that there was going to be another mouth to feed. Often times the father of the child did not have means either and so was not prepared to take responsibility for his child, abandoning the mother to her own devices. The mother might also be abandoned by her family out of poverty, or because of the social and religious stigma attached to such pregnancies. But the fact remained that there was a child on the way.

Thus the Mother and Baby Homes.

We can all decry the cruelty of the age and the inhumane conditions faced by these women, some of whom became pregnant through rape or incest.

Our Taoiseach Micheál Martin, at the launch of the report said the following:

“While this report will obviously have the most direct impact on survivors and their families, it presents all of Irish society with profound questions. The regime described in the report wasn’t imposed on us by any foreign power. We did this to ourselves as a society. We treated women exceptionally badly. We treated children exceptionally badly.

We had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy and young mothers  and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction.

As a society we embraced judgmentalism, moral certainty, a perverse religious morality and control which was so damaging. What was very striking is the absence of basic kindness. One hard truth in all this is that all of society was complicit in it.”

Micheál Martin is reading the past through modern eyes in order to attack the Catholic faith.

Regardless of the cruelty of times past, the problems of unwanted pregnancy, rape and incest have not gone away and these problems will be with us until the end of time. There is nothing new under the sun and every society chooses how it will deal with this particular problem.

The executive summary of the report says that “about 9,000 children died in the institutions under investigation” This was from 1922 to 1998, a period of 76 years, therefore an average of 119 child deaths per year.

So what has Micheál Martin done to deal with this ongoing problem of unwanted and unintended pregnancies?

Micheál Martin’s solution to this problem is also to keep it hidden by legally permitting the killing of children so conceived before they are born, preferably within twelve weeks of their being conceived. Almost 7,000 unborn children were killed in Ireland in 2019 alone. In less than two years, Micheál Martin will have presided over the killing of more children than died in the homes in the 76 years covered by this report. There is no suggestion in the report that any of the children in the Mother and Baby Homes were deliberately killed, although some women in these times did kill their children. Micheál Martin however, has no problem with dehumanising and killing unborn children.

Let me state that again.

Micheál Martin’s solution to the problem of unwanted and unintended pregnancies is to permit the killing  of many thousands of the children so conceived before they are born.

This is the man who says that in the past we treated children exceptionally badly. How is he any better then the men of the past whom he dares to judge so harshly?

He says that women were treated exceptionally badly in the past, yet his treatment of women today is to offer doctors money to help women to kill their unborn children and he, like those he judges so harshly, does not hold the fathers of these children to account either.

Micheál Martin tells us that, “as a society we embraced judgementalism”, and yet he sits in judgement and condemnation of those who in the past provided inadequate care with the limited resources they had for children, whilst at the same time he promotes the deliberate killing of the children conceived in similar circumstances today.

He and his fellow government members are no better than those they condemn. It is my opinion that their solution is far worse than what went on before. At least in times past, many, if not most, of the children born into difficult circumstances had a chance to make good. Murdered children can do nothing to improve their situation.

Now, under Micheál Martin, any child which survives the abortion provided by Micheál and his government, will be left to die in an Irish hospital’s operating theatre without basic medical care. Is this not a modern-day example of exceptionally bad treatment of children?

The blind hypocrisy of these self-congratulating, self-righteous politicians is galling in the extreme.

The following details, available from the HSE webiste on abortion, show how this  government, which speaks of the inappropriate burial of children who died in Mother and Baby Homes, treats these women and children in Ireland today.

“You can decide how to dispose of the pregnancy remains. They can be flushed down the toilet, or wrapped in tissue and disposed of as you wish.” (HSE website)

Mark my words, they are using and will continue to use this report to attack the Catholic Church having already called it a ‘perverse religious morality’.

The signs are there for anyone who has eyes to see. In the Waterford University Hospital recently, the Catholic Church was taken over and converted into a covid-19 vaccine ward. I contacted Bishop Cullinan and he was not consulted about this arrangement and the Church in question, although a Catholic Church, is not owned by the diocese of Waterford. He assured me that the Blessed Sacrament was removed from the tabernacle before the vaccinations began.

Someone sent me a link to the article on WLR FM. I use a big computer screen when working with graphics and it was startling to see a Catholic Church, with altar and crucifix, being used as a hospital ward with total disregard for the sacredness of the building.

The symbolism was unmistakable. Jesus Christ in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, truly present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, was escorted from the hospital’s Catholic Church in order to usher in the ‘sacrament’ of the new secular religion – the covid-19 vaccine. A picture paints a thousand words.

“Today – The Baptism of Our Lord

Christ is baptised. He is affirmed by God the Father and is anointed by the Holy Spirit. Christ shows the necessity of baptism. The Catechism tells us that baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life and through it, we become free from sin. Children of God and members of Christ (ccc1213)”

Then, after telling us that Christ shows us the necessity of baptism and that the Catechism tells us that baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the back page of the newsletter had this to say.

“Baptisms have been cancelled in accordance to Government Level 5 Restrictions.”

The irony of this is just not funny. It is hard to make stuff like this up. But once again, it clearly shows, that, as I noted in my last article, the laws of man are being elevated above the laws and commands of God and parishioners are informed that even though Christ says that baptism is necessary, the Sligo cathedral parish has cancelled that which is necessary for the salvation of the soul!

Then there was an interview with the new archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, conducted by Patsy McGarry of The Irish Times, in which the new bishop implied that he has no problem with the blessing of the rings of homosexual men and women or divorcees who intend to ‘marry’, provided it is done in private.

“The difficulty with blessings is that they are very often misconstrued as marriage. Priests have given these blessings in the past. I remember one colleague of mine. I had said to him – he used to have this ceremony of the blessing of rings – I said to him I don’t have a difficulty with blessing rings if you’re doing that here in the house but if you go out into the public domain, in a church, and bless rings as you see it …they turned up with 200 people and they saw it as a marriage. Sometimes people use that phraseology …you’re into confusion there. It can be misconstrued as ‘yes, the priest married us’.” (Archbishop Dermot Farrell to Patsy McGarry – Irish Times)

We also see in relation to the covid vaccination issue that our bishops are using the term ‘common good’, with the implication being, that for the common good we must take the covid-19 vaccines which have not been properly tested.

The greatest common good for mankind concerns the salvation of souls. There is no greater good for us then at the end of our lives, we  attain heaven. Nothing else is of any real or lasting importance. Whether you die of covid-19, a tragic accident, a heart attack, or simply of old age, the only thing that matters is that you are in a state of grace. This is the constant teaching of the Catholic Church.

The common good also concerns the good of the body but this cannot be at the expense of the salvation of the soul.

Christ instituted the sacraments of the Catholic Church for the salvation of souls. That we are now being denied access to the (eternal) life giving sacraments in the name of protecting our bodies is not in accord with Catholic Church teaching.

I also believe that, in another case, our bishops were sent a decoy by the state. Whether intentional or not I cannot say for certain. However, the blasphemous skit on RTE which aired on New Year’s eve, while it is nothing new, was pounced on by some of our bishops and an apology was wrought from RTE and the blasphemous clip was eventually taken down off their player.

Those objecting to the blasphemy  are the same bishops, by the way, who stated that our blasphemy laws were obsolete at the time of the referendum in 2018 and did not object to the removal of blasphemy as an offence from our constitution.

A few days after the bishops’ ‘victory’ over RTE, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, in presenting the Mother and Baby Homes report, spoke of “a perverse religious morality and control which was so damaging.”

Our bishops gave a classic example of what will be regarded as ‘perverse religious control’ in their dealings with RTE, forcing RTE to obey them. This will no doubt be construed as the Irish bishops controlling our national broadcaster by deciding what can and what cannot be broadcast.

Meanwhile the secular state continues to blaspheme Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist and to trample on the rights of Catholics to avail of the sacraments  instituted by Jesus Christ, and our bishops do not complain, instead, they co-operate with the State.

I was also sent a video of Catholics who went to RTE headquarters in Donnybrook to pray the Rosary in reparation for the blasphemy. The video clearly showed members of an Garda Síochána – The Guardians of the Peace – harassing women whilst they prayed. I saw a Garda deliberately obstruct a woman and another woman who attended the Rosary rally told me that she was pushed by a Garda. In another video, where a man was refused entry to a shop because he was not wearing a face mask, the female Garda clearly did not know the law she was supposed to be enforcing in relation to exemptions from having to wear a face mask and eventually the man was arrested but not for a face mask offence, rather on a fabricated public order charge. These videos show us that law and order is slowly but surely breaking down in this country and some members of the Garda clearly believe that they are the law and not the servants of the law.

We are living in increasingly darkening times but these are the times in which we are called to let the light of our Catholic Faith  shine brighter then ever.

“Jesus showed St Gertrude in an especial manner how much the Divine Heart desires the conversion of sinners. One day, as the Saint was praying for some miscreants who had caused great harm to her monastery, Our Lord appeared to her. His arm was painfully bent and distorted, and the sinews appeared quite broken. He said to her: “those who pray for the conversion of these unfortunate men pour a soothing balm upon My suffering arm, and with a delicate hand bring back little by little the muscles to their proper place”.

Surprised at such an excess of goodness, St Gertrude said to Jesus: “Most sweet Lord, how can you call such men your arm, unworthy as they are of such an honour?”

“I call them so in truth, because they are members of the body of that Church of which I glory to be the Head. Therefore the state of their souls causes Me unspeakable anxiety. My Heart has an intense desire for their conversion.” (Love Peace & Joy page 17)

Our Lady came to the three children in Fatima and gave The Five First Saturdays Devotion, specifically for the conversion of poor sinners. She constantly asks us to pray and to sacrifice ourselves for the conversion of sinners because it is sin that is the root cause of all of our problems. Let us not become disheartened by the darkness around us but let us heed the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Blessed Mother and pray for the conversion of poor sinners