Belfast priest voices strong opposition to socialist plan to bring abortion to Northern Ireland.
DURING his
homily last Sunday, a West Belfast priest voiced his vehement opposition to
Labour MP Stella Creasy’s
recent amendment to the Northern Ireland Bill. Fr. Paddy McCafferty Parish
Priest of Corpus Christi Parish, Ballymurphy said her amendments would see “the most extreme abortion laws in
the world” being introduced if devolution is not restored at Stormont by 21
October.
Fr. McCafferty added: “Preventing the killing our innocent brothers and sisters who are not yet born is everyone’s business and we must do everything in our lawful power to prevent it.”
Abortion in Northern Ireland is only available in very limited circumstances in the province and same-sex marriage remains illegal, yet amendments aimed at changing the law on both moral issues were tabled by Creasy and Conor McGinn last Tuesday 9 July.
Rarely do devolved issues make it on to the House of Commons floor for debate. Rarer still, do devolved issues get an overwhelming backing from MPs during votes. When they did they went all out, voting to impose change to the State’s pro life laws and introduce same-sex “marriage” if devolution is not restored, which if Sinn Fein have anything to do with it, it won’t be.
Yet, despite this onslaught 100 per cent of Northern Ireland MPs who have taken their seat in Westminster, voted against it. And it is to their credit.
We must do everything in our power to prevent the killing of our innocent brothers and sisters.
Fr McCafferty
began his homily of the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time and we publish it here in
full with kind permission of Fr. McCafferty:
“Dear sisters and brothers,
If we are to live in right relationship with our Creator, as true children of God, then, at the heart of the Great Law enjoined upon us, there is ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Love for God is inseparable from love of neighbour and we are to care for our neighbours as we care for our own selves.
Our neighbour is to be seen as an extension of our own selves. We are part of one another because ‘the Church is His body and He is its Head’ (Colossians 1:18).
No right-thinking person deliberately hurts himself or herself. We avoid hurt in every way possible. In the same way, we are to avoid causing deliberate hurt and suffering to our neighbours.
The devious lawyer set out to trap Our Lord with his questions – to catch Him out – but, instead, his trick questions led to the Lord giving us the parable of the Good Samaritan. In answer to the question, ‘who is my neighbour?’, for all time, it is made abundantly clear that EVERYONE is my neighbour.
The Samaritans and the Jews, to put it mildly, did not get along. And yet, when a Jewish man is left for dead, stripped, beaten and robbed, by the side of the road, it is a Samaritan traveller who takes pity on him and saves his life.
The priest and the Levite, who were supposed to be ‘holy’, responsible for the worship of God, who would have known the Law of God and the responsibilities it gives towards others (especially someone badly injured), didn’t want to know. They turned a blind eye and passed by on the other side. It was the ‘outside’, the ‘Good Samaritan’ showed himself to be a true neighbour.
Who is my neighbour? The answer is everyone. This weekend I want to focus on a certain grouping of those neighbours – the plight of those brothers and sisters of ours who are in the gravest danger – boys and girls in the womb.
Last Tuesday night, a bill was introduced in the British parliament and, if it is successful, it will impose one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world on the North of Ireland.
Who is my neighbour? The most arrogant of the abortionists will try to tell us that abortion is none of our business. “Don’t like abortion? Then don’t have one” is what I saw one of them write on social media the other day. The logic of that is: ‘don’t like murder? Then don’t commit murder; but don’t try and stop me from committing it’.
It’s absurd. The prevention of killing our innocent brothers and sisters who are not yet born is everyone’s business and we must do everything in our lawful power to prevent it, to persuade people that deliberately killing a child is never justified under any circumstances. It is our duty to oppose abortion. Intentional abortion is intrinsically evil – evil by its very nature.
Let us be clear what abortion is: what God forbids in His Law under ‘Thou shalt not commit murder’ is the DELIBERATE AND INTENTIONAL killing of a child in the womb by lethal injection, suction, surgical dismemberment, or whatever other barbaric means.
An abortion IS NOT when, in rare medical circumstances, the child dies during an attempt to save the life of a mother. The key words in the sin and crime of abortion are ‘wilful’, ‘deliberate’ and ‘intentional’. If the child dies during an attempt to save the mother’s life, that is not the intention. It was not the doctor’s intention to deliberately kill that child. Abortion, however, is deliberately intended to destroy the child.
Three monstrous and wicked lies.
The abortion
industry, now firmly established in the 26 counties of our country is founded
upon three monstrous and wicked lies: ‘my body’; my right of choice’; and ‘healthcare’.
Lie no 1: its my body and I decide what to do with it. No, it is not. Firstly, even when it is your own body only that you are dealing with, you still can’t just do what you like with it.
For example, you can’t walk into hospital and demand that they amputate your perfectly healthy leg. They will have you sectioned in the psychiatric ward. So no one can do what he or she likes even with their own body.
The body of the unborn child, however, belongs to the child – not the woman. The child’s body is NOT the woman’s body. It is a separate body entirely. And to deliberately kill that child is infanticide.
Lie no 2: ‘Its my choice whether to have the child or not’. No man and no woman has the right to choose to destroy any innocent human being – even the tiny and most vulnerable human beings of all – the unborn.
The child in the womb is a human being and he and she has the same human rights as every other human being who happens to be at another stage of development. The human rights of the child cannot be usurped by any human power – no government, no parliament or Dail, no President, Taoiseach or Prime Minister and no referendum.
The ‘majority’ do not get to decide whether or not the child has rights. He and she has them. What they did in the 26 counties last year, what they are going to attempt to do here now, is to legalise killing. The right to life is inherent. It is God-given and absolutely no one can rescind that right. Abortion is the brutal suppression of the child’s right to life. It is quite simply legalised killing.
Lie no 3: ‘abortion is healthcare’. They trot out this falsehood again and again. If you tell a lie often enough, people will start to believe it and it becomes accepted. This is how they sanitise abortion and desensitise people to the reality of abortion.
Abortion is the OPPOSITE of healthcare.
Abortion is the
OPPOSITE of healthcare. The cruel, clinical and calculated destruction of life
is a perversion of true healthcare. Real healthcare saves life, nurtures and
protects it. The justification of abortion is built upon these lies spawned in
the pit of Hell.
Baroness Nuala O’Loan has written a letter to Theresa May making a very strong case for removing abortion from this bill introduced on Tuesday evening. We are asked to sign her letter. There are blank sheets around the Church. Please don’t leave without signing. It’s vitally important. We need to make our voice heard.
The Word of God comforts us by reassuring us, ‘Do not fret on account of the wicked ….’ (Psalm 37:1). Today’s 2nd Reading points us to the ultimate resolution of all things in Christ. Evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Abortion is death and Death has been defeated by the Lord.
So even if the abortionists get their evil way – remember those two politicians holding up their sign ‘The North Is Next’? – even if they succeed, they will never ultimately prevail. And the faithful people of God will never ‘mind their own business’ about abortion.
We will oppose it. We will pray against it. We seek to dissuade people from it. We will bear witness to the Truth that human life is sacred from the moment of conception. We will proclaim, loud and clear, that to deliberately destroy human life is profoundly evil by its very nature.
Nevertheless, we cry out: “Arise, O God, let the wicked not prevail! (Psalm 9:19) Let those who hate You, flee before You!” (Psalm 68:1).