Let us pause for a moment to offer up one Hail Mary for our bishops so that they will have the courage to boldly proclaim the Gospel message and be a light in these darkening times.
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.
I would like to thank all of those who have sent in donations to our recent appeal where we are offering a complimentary copy of ‘Ireland’s Loyalty to the Mass’. The response has been great and people have contacted me to tell me how much they have enjoyed the book and of how it has given them a sense of courage when they read of how our ancestors stood firm in the face of persecution. We will keep this offer running until the end of June so if you would like to receive a copy of ‘Ireland’s Loyalty to the Mass’ whilst supporting our apostolate to promote and defend our Catholic Faith, then please fill out the form at the end of this article and return it with your donation to the address listed.
Catholics are going to need both courage and fortitude in these times when it is clear that the Irish government is seeking to rid our country of the influence of Catholicism once and for all. Our government has sought to interfere in the renewed celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by re-iterating their instructions for religious services on 28th April, 2021. When it comes to distributing the Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity of Jesus Christ our secular government says:
“Communion should be distributed into the hands and NOT onto the tongue. The host should be placed in the hand of the recipient in such a way as to avoid hand contact. Priests and Ministers should be trained in the technique of placing the host in the recipient’s hand in a manner that avoids hand contact. Communicants should be told how the Communion host will be delivered.”
The norm for distributing Holy Communion in the Catholic Church is on the tongue whilst the communicant is kneeling and Catholics always have the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue. The Irish government is contradicting the norm of the Catholic Church by forbidding Holy Communion on the tongue and the government is going beyond their lawful authority.
The Irish Government also re-iterates their blasphemy against Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the altar when they state in their guidance for Religious Services that:
“The elements of Communion can also be placed in individual disposable cups or containers and left separated on a tray or table for collection. Communicants could then approach and pick up an individual container for themselves while making sure not to touch any other hosts. The disposable cups or containers should be placed in a designated receptacle afterwards.”
To speak of the Holy Eucharist in such disrespectful terms is blasphemous.
The Irish Government is Hell bent on eradicating our Catholic culture which is transmitted primarily by way of the traditional Catholic family. The Catholic Primary Schools Management Association recently launched an RSE programme called Flourish. I have not studied the programme and so I cannot say whether the content is good or not, but it hit the headlines because while it mentions that “Children in the senior classes in primary school will be aware of the existence of LGBTQI and some may question their own identity in this regard.”, it also says:
“However, the Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”
This led to some questions in the Irish parliament. I am once again indebted to Séamus de Barra for providing me the text of these exchanges. The first came from Deputy Roisín Shorthall addressed to Tánaiste Leo Varadkar on Thursday 29th April, 2021.
Deputy Róisín Shorthall:
“A new relationships and sexuality education, RSE, programme for Catholic primary schools was published this week, as the Tánaiste knows. It was developed by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The programme, in its introduction, states that when discussing LGBTQ+ plus issues with children, “the Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”. We know what that teaching is. Relationships between men and women are natural. LGBTQ+ relationships are “intrinsically disordered”.
As recently as last month, incredibly, the Vatican reaffirmed that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin”. That is the church’s position. Let us not pretend otherwise. However, it is not the State’s position or the public’s position. We had a marriage equality referendum in this country in 2015 which passed by a huge majority. Same-sex marriage is every bit as valid as a heterosexual marriage.
Teaching children that relationships can be placed in a hierarchy depending on sexual orientation should be an anathema in any modern republic. Do we really want LGBTQ+ children, who may be struggling with their sexual orientation, to be taught in schools that their relationships are in any way less worthy, meaningful, loving or deserving of respect than their heterosexual peers? That is the inference of this programme.
This is an issue that does not just affect children. Speaking at the INTO’s annual conference at the start of the month, its vice president Joe McKeown said that up to 4,000 LGBTQ+ teachers are hiding their sexual orientation because they feared their jobs or promotion prospects would be harmed if their school patrons discovered their true identity.
The Tánaiste may say that Catholic schools have an ethos, but sex education needs to be fact-based. Facts do not have an ethos. Can he tell me why, in 2021, RSE for Irish children is being developed by Catholic bishops and not the National Council for Curriculum Assessment? Why has the Minister for Education remained silent on this? What is the Government going to do to ensure pluralism in our schools and that we teach our children mutual respect?”
There is no surprise here from Róisín, and Catholics should pray for her conversion. She is probably sincere in her beliefs and she means well, but she is in error. Many of those who contradict Catholic teaching on human sexuality do so in the name of science and facts, however they ignore true science and the facts.
It is a fact that two men cannot pro-create children together. It is a fact that two women cannot pro-create children together. It is a fact that only a man and a woman can procreate children together, whether married or not. Therefore, it is also a fact that heterosexual relationships are not equal to homosexual relationships.
It is a fact that born children are regarded by society as a great good. There was a time when unborn children were also regarded as a great good, but modern Irish governments, allow unborn children to be murdered.
Given that children are a great good, it is a fact that the great good of children can only come from heterosexual relationships. Therefore, not only are heterosexual relationships not equal to homosexual relationships, they are far superior because of the great good of children that only come from heterosexual relationships.
This is not to say that heterosexuals are superior to same-sex attracted individuals, but that heterosexual relationships are superior to homosexual relationships because it is a fact that the great good of children only comes from heterosexual relationships.
As Part of his reply to Róisín, Tánaiste Leo Varadker said:
“As things stand, all schools have to have an RSE policy and that has to be developed in consultation with school management, parents, teachers and students, as appropriate. A school’s programme for RSE is developed and taught in the context of the school’s RSE policy. The ethos of the school should never preclude learners from acquiring knowledge about the issues involved, but may influence how the content is treated.”
The topic came up again in the Dáil on Wednesday 5th May, 2021. This time Deputy Paul Murphy, whose bill seeks to remove the Catholic ethos from RSE in Catholic schools, questioned Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Deputy Paul Murphy
“The programme for Government makes a commitment to developing inclusive and age-appropriate relationships and sexuality education, RSE, and social, personal and health education, SPHE, curricula at primary and post-primary levels, including an inclusive programme on LGBTI+ relationships and making appropriate legislative changes, if necessary. That is not happening, however.
Instead, the Catholic Primary School Management Association, effectively the Catholic bishops, has published a new programme, Flourish, outlining how RSE should be taught in its schools. Not only is Flourish not LGBTI+ inclusive, it is positively homophobic.
Let me quote a number of lines from Flourish to the Taoiseach in case he is not aware of it. It states, “The Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”. It describes puberty as “a gift from God” and states “we are perfectly designed by God to procreate with him”.
It states a Catholic school must consider these topics within “a moral framework that reflects the teachings of the Church”. This is very far from what is promised in the programme for Government. What is the Government going to do about it? Does it recognise that the Education Act 1998 needs to be amended along the lines we proposed in legislation still on Committee Stage, the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018, to prevent the religious ethos of a school from standing in the way of children receiving what they are entitled to?”
Once again, Mr Murphy, like his colleague Roisín Shorthall, is in need of prayers for his conversion and he too is in error. He uses his Dáil privilege to falsely accuse the authors of creating a homophobic programme, that is, a programme which promotes hatred of people who are same-sex attracted. The quotes that he takes from the programme are not homophobic.
To say that a Catholic School must promote Catholic teaching on human sexuality is a simple statement of fact. How would Mr Murphy like it if the shoe was on the other foot. Supposing one of his favoured secular schools was told that they could not promote a secular understanding of human sexuality because to do so would be Christophobic. Is Mr Murphy a Christophobe? Does he hate Catholics? Is he saying that Catholic parents no longer have the right to a Catholic education for their children?
From his actions and pronouncements in Dáil Éireann, it would seem that Mr Murphy believes that he and the Irish Government have the right to impose their views on Catholic children regardless of the wishes of Catholic parents. A case of the kettle calling the pot black?
In his response, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said, “All children attending all schools will have to have the state RSE programme provided.”
One would hope that our Irish bishops will rise to the challenge, but at present there is no sign of this happening, especially when one looks at how they have bowed down before the government’s blasphemous covid-19 strategy for Catholic worship.
A friend recently sent me a screen-shot from the Facebook page of St Patrick’s Church, Donabate, which is quite disturbing because it is introducing a new class of lesser Catholic, the un-vaccinated Catholic. You can see the screen-shot on the facing page. They say that vaccinated grandparents can attend a baptism. What they are really saying is that un-vaccinated Catholic grandparents will be discriminated against and will not be allowed to attend their grand-children’s baptisms. This is where Catholic Church in Ireland seems to be heading.
Someone else sent me some literature in response to my article about Bishop Paul Dempsey’s recent reflection where, sounding uncannily like Roisín Shorthall and Paul Murphy, he condemned the language of the CDF document forbidding the blessing of non-marital sexual relationships.
The literature showed that the Catholic ethos ‘Mary Immaculate College’ in Limerick, which has three Catholic bishops on the board of Trustees, last year publicly raised the LGBT promoting rainbow flag on Campus.
The ‘Irish Institute for Catholic Studies’, which is based at Mary Immaculate College, last year hosted a Maynooth professor whose topic was “Why? And How?: Queering schooling for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Education”.
If you are not sure what this is about, let me share with you some of the abstract for one of this professor’s papers.
“Voices critiquing heteronormativity in faith schools often rely on an understanding of such schools as arbiters for heteronormative religious orthodoxies. Many proponents of Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools offer compelling responses to such claims by providing inclusive perspectives on faith schooling. By applying a queer reading of temporality to a critique of the latter body of work, this paper will argue that these perspectives, despite their commitments to inclusion, have affinities with logics of heteronormativity through their appeal to a language of hospitality that reproduces adherence to heteronormative binaries and identity frames as originary and normative.”
Talk about the emperor’s new clothes. These people create words such as heteronormative and use intellectual sounding gobbledegook in order to try to mask the fact that heterosexual relationships are normative whereas homosexual relationships are non-normative.
The Catholic Church does not create “heteronormative binaries”. These binaries come directly from God the creator and are scientifically verifiable.
“Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.” (Matthew 19:4-5)
The three bishops on the board of Trustees at Mary Immaculate College are, Bishop Brendan Leahy, Bishop Raymond Browne and Bishop Kieran O’Reilly.
My purpose in writing about these topics is not about the bishops. My purpose is to alert Catholic parents to the fact that there is a growing movement in Ireland and globally which seeks to introduce primary school children to ‘queer’ ideology. Some of those involved in this movement are same-sex attracted themselves and they have no wish to live moral lives, they want to continue engaging in immoral sexual acts.
They seek to ‘queer’ the curriculum in order to gain acceptance, not for themselves only, but for their sinful lifestyles and they are happy to corrupt the innocence of children, your children included, so badly do they crave this acceptance. Sadly, some of our bishops are complicit in allowing the promotion of this sinful lifestyle in their dioceses and in the schools of which they are the patrons.
It is the duty of Catholic parents to protect their children from these nefarious influences and to make sure their children have a proper understanding of human sexuality at the proper age. God will hold you to account for any negligence in this matter because He abhors the abuse of the innocence of children.
“But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6)
Like our ancestors before us, let us stand firm in defending our Catholic Faith.
