Monday 28 May 2018

THE ABORTION REFERENDUM

Image result for irish abortion referendum



THE VOTERS OF IRELAND HAVE DECIDED THAT THE COUNTRY WILL NOW ALLOW ABORTION ON DEMAND UP TO 12 WEEKS AND WILL ALSO ALLOW ABORTION IN VARIOUS MEDICALLY FOCUSED CASES.

Many of us thought that the vote would indeed go "YES" but by a very tight margin.

In the end, it was nearly 70% for YES and 30% for NO.

That large margin certainly came as a great surprise to me and many others.

Most people are celebrating the Yes victory.

Others are feeling very dismayed by it.

The Irish people as an electorate have the democratic right to vote for the laws that govern their country.


For me, it is interesting to note that nearly everybody voting in the referendum was a baptized Roman Catholic and had been through up to 14 years of "Catholic education".


This is interesting because the Catholic Church teaches most strongly that abortion is a most serious sin.


It also seems to suggest that Catholic catechesis has not worked and is not working.




AN ANTI CHURCH REFERENDUM?


While I am sure that most people voted YES for rational and compassionate reasons I also believe that the referendum was another nail in the coffin of the Catholic Church dominating Ireland.


This is just another step in the national rejection of Catholicism by the Irish people - other steps being the introduction of contraception, the introduction of divorce and the introduction of same-sex marriage.


All of these developments are signs of the Irish population giving the two-finger salute to their former religious lords and masters.



IS ABORTION STILL IMMORAL AND A SIN?


The Irish people and people everywhere can decide what should be legal and what should be illegal.

But morality cannot be decided by a popular or majority vote.


There are objective moral laws and norms and these norms do not come from a majority vote.


These things stand above the votes of men and women. 


Apart from Christianity and Catholicism most rational people believe that it is wrong to kill a human being except in exceptional cases like self-defence. 


Of course, there is widespread disagreement on when exactly the fetus becomes a human being.


Personally, I believe that this happens at the moment of conception. I know that many will disagree with me.


So that means that I believe that abortion is the taking away of a human life.


Only a very strange person who describe abortion as A GOOD.


Sometimes it may the lesser of two evils - one of those greater evils being the death of the mother. But it is still an "evil".


Of course, as humans, we cannot judge the personal culpability of the person having the abortion. That is God's job. 


Last Friday has not changed the morality of abortion.

As a priest, I would, of course, deal very compassionately with people who have found themselves caught up in all of these situations.




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A WONDERFUL, INSPIRING STORY


FRENCH MIGRANT  HERO SAVES CHILD'S LIFE




'Hero' Malian immigrant who saved child dangling from balcony is to get French citizenship
Mamoudou Gassama (22) met with President Macron at the Presidential Palace where he was given a medal for bravery.
A MALIAN MIGRANT who saved a four-year-old child hanging from a fourth-floor Paris balcony after scaling the building with his bare hands was honoured by French President Emmanuel Macron today and offered citizenship.
Two days after his daring Spiderman-style rescue – viewed millions of times online – Mamoudou Gassama was received by Macron at the presidential palace.
“All the (Gassama’s) documents will be put in order,” Macron told the sporty 22-year-old who has become a national hero, referring to his immigration status.
In the meeting, live footage of which was carried on the president’s Facebook page, Macron gave Gassama a medal for bravery and also proposed that Gassama join the French fire service.
“I was not thinking of anything. I went straight up”, Gassama, who wore jeans and a short-sleeved patterned shirt, told Macron, recounting the episode.
“Bravo,” Macron replied.
“I’m pleased because it’s the first time I’ve received a trophy like that,” Gassama, who arrived in France in September 2017, said after receiving his medal.
Gassama leaped into action Saturday evening on seeing a child dangling in mid-air from a balcony half-way up an apartment block in the multi-ethnic 18th district of the French capital.
The video shows him pulling himself up from balcony to balcony as a man on the fourth floor tries to hold on to the child by leaning across from a neighbouring balcony.
On reaching the fourth floor Gassama, who lives in a hostel for immigrants, throws one leg over the balcony before reaching out with his right arm and grabbing the child
Mamoudou Gassama at Elysee Palace - Paris
Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the child had already been rescued, with a spokesman saying that “luckily, there was someone who was physically fit and who had the courage to go and get the child.”
Praising Gassama, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux tweeted: “This incredibly brave act, which is true to the values of solidarity of our Republic, must open the doors of our national community to him.”
His story instantly drew comparisons with that of another Malian migrant who was feted as a hero, and given citizenship, for helping save lives during a January 2015 terror attack.
Lassana Bathily helped hide hostages in the freezer during an Islamist jihadi attack on a Jewish supermarket, in which four people were killed.
 Dream of a better life
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo also lauded Gassama, who arrived in France in September 2017, for his “act of bravery” as well as phoning him personally to “thank him warmly”.
“He explained to me that he had arrived from Mali a few months ago dreaming of building his life here.
“I told him that his heroic act is an example to all citizens and that the city of Paris will obviously be very keen to support him in his efforts to settle in France,” she added.
Tracked down by reporters 24 hours after the heroic rescue, Gassama said he had acted without thinking. and, thank God, I saved the child,” he said.
“I felt afraid  when I saved the child… (when) we went into the living room, I started to shake, I could hardly stand up, I had to sit down,” he added.
According to initial inquiries by the authorities, the child’s parents were not at home at the time.
The father was held for questioning by police for having left his child unattended.
The child’s mother was not in Paris at the time.

82 comments:

  1. I went to a catholic national school and a 2nd level community school with a bishop appointed chaplain. 13 years of religious education followed by philosophy studies in Maynooth as a seminarian. At no point during all that time was the catechism thought. The church does not teach it's own teachings. The bishops/priests do not practice their own teachings - as this blog repeatedly demonstrates.

    Ergo: the church in Ireland failed because it has got lazy, and amounts to little more than a comfortable bachelorhood. Abortion is legal because the Church is negligant and has been so for many years.

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  2. Was divorce and contraception the result of a referendum on each issue?

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    1. Divorse yes. Contraception was the result of a court case where a wife was told she medically could not have more kids but the husband still wanted to play.

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  3. I am not Irish, but how it will affect hospitals described as having a "Catholic ethos"?

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    1. For me the best account of what a Catholic ethos in a hospital is like, is found in former porn star Scott O'Hara's memoirs Rarely Pure and Never Simple. He recounts causing major accidental damage to his hand with a power tool and staggering to the nearest hospital which happened to be a Catholic one. When he got the there he couldn't be seen at once because the entire waiting room, including the staff, were on their knees praying, as the then Pope had just been shot. A Catholic ethos in anything changes the priorities to the ones we can see described on this blog on a daily basis.

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    2. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor ordered the board of St John & Elizabeth Hospital in London to resign over abortion provision. One of the board included the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg after complaints about it from the CDF in Rome. This will clearly have the same affect on Irish Hospitals with a Catholic ethos.

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    3. Thanks for the reply.

      It will be interesting to see what ‘exemptions’ are inserted in the final legislation.

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    4. I give no credance to what a porn star says.

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    5. @10:50

      Do you mean JRM = KOB???

      God Almighty... I need another whisky-and-ginger-beer!

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    6. Oh, dear God, +Pat, could it really be true, JRM is a pooftah like KOB??? Stranger things have happened I suppose.

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  4. I agree with 00.13 the church has got lazy. If this blog is to be believed so much time is spent talking about renegade clergy of one type or another, bitching about others and looking for more scandal. Where is the love of God in any of this. Somebody keeps telling me to clear off to my new church Rubbish.

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    1. 07.13: Sean, you are a hypocrite. You contribute to the negativity on this blog by engaging with Pat's agenda. It is an injustice to say the Church is lazy. That's simplistic and unintelligent as an "analysis". There are multifaceted reasons why the Church is losing it's moral authority. You need to go beyond soundbytes. I don't consider myself "lazy" in my approach to my pastoral duties. Nor do the majority of priests. We are certainly struggling with the challenges of change. Perhaps we are being invited to focus on the true meaning of gospel service. But soundbytes like yours belong to the trash bin.

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    2. 12:30, try to be honest, for just once in your utterly useless life, priest.

      It is precisely because of people like you that Ireland has drifted so far from moral probity that it could so unconscionably vote the way it did in the Abortion Referendum.

      You clerical harlots, through gross and perennial moral violations, have driven people away from consideration of others, from self-sacrifice. Why would they listen to hypocrites like you, and your papal masters, when you all have done such appalling harm to the Body of Christ through your selfish and criminal behaviour?

      As for the institutional Church's so-called 'moral authority', it NEVER had any such authority, since Jesus did not bequeath authority to it, but to the Holy Spirit; and the Spirit animates the ENTIRE Church, not just the so-called 'Magisterium'.

      You priests do not want to listen to the Church proper; you never have. Why the hell should it have listened to your moral hectoring in the run-up to that referendum?!

      Had I a broom wide enough, I'd sweep every f****** Roman Catholic priest in Ireland right off the face of Holy Mother Earth. Why? Because the lot of you are not just useless to the Church; you are, and have been, downright harmful to it.

      I only hope that more and more Irish people stop feeding, clothing and housing useless spongers like you.

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    3. Marriage wreckers, especially those who have defected to Protestantism are in no position to pontificate on Catholic matters.

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    4. The only marriage MC would wreck would be a same sex one lol.

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    5. I reckon blue Magna is unemployed if he's commentating in a weekday afternoon.

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    6. 14.13: Typical foul mouthed diatribe from a reject! Try Mags to find some fibre of decency in your bones. You have absolutely no idea who I am and I can assure you, were you to live to be 200 you'd never achieve the good I achieve in one day. You, sadly are the parasite - but living off the crap s**t from your petty mind. God help you. You are drink fuelled again. Take a nap under your rock.

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    7. 16:34, just sayin', like. πŸ˜†

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    8. 12.30 Perhaps I need to apologise. Not everyone in the church is lazy. Some appear to be caught in their own agenda if the blog is to be believed. Somebody has to carry the can for the way church in general is allegedly engaging with the people

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    9. 19.02: Sean, you do yourself no favours with such vacuous comments....and you an Anglican? We expect more intelligent, coherent comments...or perhaps you should return to the true fold. P.S - you shouldn't believe everything you read on this blog...be clever.

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    10. The church has and continues to fail in teaching it's own teachings. Being busy is not the same as being good. I have never witnessed a priest sharing learning from the catechism and I believe many priests have never read the cathecism

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  5. MourneManMichael29 May 2018 at 08:09

    +Pat: I take a different view on your statement that there are objective moral laws and norms. Such objectivity presupposes an external "lawmaker". Many will describe this external lawmaker as God.

    I believe that while there is a very broad almost universal acceptance of what may seem to be objective moral laws and norms, that consensus on morality has arisen over countless generations and is embedded in the human psyche's evolutionary development.
    In that respect, morality can be situational, both in terms of place and time. In saying this I refer to the broad consensus rather than any concept that individuals are free to choose their own version of morality.
    MMM

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  6. I hear Fr Damien Quigley on Nolan writing to a marriage couple indicating he may not marry them if they voted Yes in the referendum. He was weird in Maynooth and a big friend of Barry “the gossip” Matthews. They were in Maynooth with Gprgeous, Gannon, Puck and Horny Andy. I think there was a photo of them all on a bus with Quigley. Nolan asked Armagh for a statement this morning and (wait for it) they had nothing to add - sounds familiar.

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    1. 10.02. Surprise,Surprise, Here we go again. Fr.Damien Quigley heard him on Nolan. Pity Nolan had quizzed him about another good friend of his. Great friend of Fr.Gates of Magherafelt. Gates had Quigley as a deacon in our parish. The parish had a big leaving party for Quigley.Gates Also brought him back again to say a Mass in the Assumption. Another fine collection for him. what a coincidence we have Gates one day, now his weird friend another day. When is the ghost of Gates going to vanish. It's well saying they both are weird. They are both the bosses of all causes.

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    2. Know alot about Pope Damien Quigley. Not long a priest an he is bonkers. He had not too many friends in maynooth. He was aloaner. Has only a very good friend Fr.John Gates Magherafelt. Same personality. Another bully.

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    3. Another Deacon sent to Magherafelt was the completely bonkers Joe Quinn. What is it with this Magherafelt place?

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    4. 14.17.What about the laughing hyena. Fr.Mc Hugh was he not a deacon in the same parish. I recall the video of him laughing like a hyena in the house of God.Would a child be at that carry-on. Doubt not. Strange things in that parish. Where do they get them from. Strange flock..

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    5. I hear the Archbishop has had two Priests turn down going to Magherafelt Parish as they don’t want the hassle or clean up any of the mess. Looks like they are stuck with John for a while longer. Poisioned chalice springs to mind. They might end up with an African PP in the end.

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    6. Magna at 14.13: That's quite a load of dirt you've heaped on this blog! You backside should be emptied with this load! Oh, maybe I've spoken too soon. People who write this hate invective are trailer trash.

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    7. 16:41, thank ee! πŸ˜†

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    8. 15.43 I’m sure Eamon Martin can find some problem Priest in Co. Louth and export him to Magherafelt. Co. Louth is where they tend to send all their problems so Co. Louth should return the favour and send someone to Co. Derry. Perhaps there is a desk or teaching Priest hanging around elsewhere who could be called upon. Failing that send Darcy.

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    9. ABD. #anybodybutdarcy

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    10. 18.24 I wouldn’t object to Fr Darcy coming here. I don’t think the idea of an African priest would work out in Magherafelt.

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    11. Racism, pure and simple.

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    12. 20.09 I meant a cultural difficulty not a racial one - what were you getting at? Not all African Priests are black, look at South Africa for instance. Not all people living in Ireland are Irish either. You have made this a racial issue not me.

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    13. Whether white or black or mixed race you've said an African is unwelcome in Magherafelt. Racism pure and simple.

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    14. @21.26 I most certainly did not say an African is unwelcome, those are your words and it is you who say it. Read the post properly before diving in feet first with your spurious accusations.

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    15. "I don't think the idea of an African priest would work out in Magherafelt" isn't racist lol.

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  7. it's a sad day for Ireland apart from any church teachings abortion is morally wrong.

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  8. That young lad has balls of steel!

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    1. You mean the Mali guy. What humanity and what instinctive heroism!

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  9. Bishop Kevin Doran has told Catholics who voted Yes that they need to go to Confession. Young people will simply laugh in his face. Eamon Martin is now under pressure to state if Catholics will be refused the Sacraments for voting Yes. The media shouldn’t expect an answer from him anytime soon.

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    1. I think it is disgusting the vote of the Irish people and to see them celebrating as if they had all won the lotto...i am a father of a child that was born at 23 weeks and he is thriving today thank God..for myself and my wife we feel that this is now abortion on the tap for anyone who feels they can't deal with a pregnancy and maybe a pregnancy from rape but why wait to the baby is developed in the womb and then decide to abort as I am sure when you know you are an unfortunate victim of rape why not get the aftermorning pill and avoid all this...yes there is an argument for foetal abnormality..but for us now it seems that any young woman can go in after 12 weeks and say they are suffering mentally and be eligible for abortion it really makes my stomach turn..i live in Northern Ireland and someone who in the past would liked to see a united Ireland..Ireland is a place now that I would feel embarrassed to be a citizen off...so fair play to those that will continue to appose murder in womb in the North.

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    2. I just don't want to set foot in the Republic now. It sickens me. Thank God for the DUP.

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    3. Wouldn't be a fan of DUP but fair play to them standing by there traditional views..i genuinely think the young ones don't realise what they have voted for but maybe someday they might realise.

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    4. Thank God for the Traditional Unionist Voice and Jim Allister. He will be getting my vote next time,

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  10. 10.20 Hardly balls of steel when confronted about a message he sent to the couple. He wouldn’t comment on radio calling it a private matter but it is now public and he has no balls in my mind. His own Bishop in Armagh wouldn’t even comment. Very mature debate.

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    1. He sent a private message to the couple in question to sit down and have a conversation...Fr Quigley didn't ask for it to go into the public and think it was the cowardly couple in question so Father Quigley or Armagh has nothing to state to big mouth Nolan...they simply have Catholic values..i feel they are damned if they do and damned if they can't but on this blog the Catholic church just can't win..

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    2. The Biggest Show in the Country29 May 2018 at 22:36

      21.43 Quigley posted it on Facebook which is a social media platform and can be very much public. If the priest had any cop on he would have rang the couple (a more personal touch) rather than put a post on Facebook. As for big mouth Nolan I’m looking forward to his show in the morning.

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  11. As any psychotherapist can tell you, a child not wanted by its mother wouldn't have much of a life anyway.

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    1. There are plenty of people desperate to adopt. In UK hospitals you have the grotesque scenario of complicated IVF treatments on one ward, while abortions are happening down the corridor.

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  12. Some of the yes people seemed to think they were voting for just a little bit of abortion. How naΓ―ve is that? Only a venial sin perhaps?

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    1. Or not a sin at all, in many circumstances.

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  13. Many Irish women apparently went abroad for abortions, but what if they couldn’t afford it?

    +Pat, was/is there still “backstreet abortions” going on like the film “Vera Drake”?

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    1. If they couldn't afford it the baby lived.

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  14. Catholicism is not dying.
    It is growing up.

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    1. Fr Quigley reported all back to Paul Prior in Maynooth.

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    2. Yes he was a total grass 12.58 and that Barry Matthews from Armagh also. Armagh Sems were always reporting other Sems. A nasty bunch during my time there and by all accounts not much has changed.

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    3. The poor babies won't be doing much growing up, 12:28.

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    4. 12:28, Catholicism is not dying, but 'growing up'?? Oh, Jeez! This is the funniest line I've read so far today.

      If it is only starting to grow up after nearly two millenia of existence, it must be the slowest learner in history. πŸ˜…πŸ˜†

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    5. 13.05 By what you say about Armagh Seminarians in Maynooth back then and now, I shudder to think what sort of young Priests we have in our parishes.

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  15. Why did Dermo and Co not quote Pope Francis words on abortion to the many faces of the media - 'Abortion is not the lesser of two evils. It is a crime, an absolute evil' 2016. Perhaps because they sold out the prolife cause 30 years ago and simply ticked a few boxes on their way through the referendum. Look how isolated Doran is among them. The pope should be told that nobody quoted him to the media. Besides, it may be portrayed as a vote against domineering church, but in reality it is a movement away from God, a decisive movement. Remember Revelations - the spirit of anti-Christ will be very powerful, very destructive and very POPULAR. It seems the people will now move past euthanasia and onto their war. Democracy doesn't really seem to work when the true God is rejected.

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  16. https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/northern-ireland-catholics-who-promote-abortion-may-not-be-allowed-church-wedding-says-priest-36957028.html

    Wow.... i’ll Just throw this wee hand grenade into the room and let you guys take it from
    Here ...:

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    1. Is it not interesting that all these priests causing problems are all connected?

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    2. Yes that numbskull Barry Matthews oversaw the downfall of some good Seminarians during his time in Maynooth. He was always a tell tit and looking over his shoulder every time he scuttled into the office to report someone. Then we had to listen to the shite that came out of his cakehole when he preached. Drogheda is welcome to him.

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    3. Quigley was big buddies with Barry Matthews and he was a freaky Sci Fi fan. Eamon Martin might be well advised to tell him to keep his trap shut in future. Who sends an engaged couple to be married a Facebook message? Quigley has a lot to learn about the media never mind reality. Some clergy interview well on the airwaves and know how to handle it but some, like Quigley, fail miserably simply by issuing statements rather than be interviewed. If you want to dish it out you must learn to take it back in return.

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  17. Michael Kelly has written a thought-provoking article about the long overdue death of cultural Catholicism.

    https://www.irishcatholic.com/the-long-overdue-death%E2%80%A8-of-cultural-catholicism/

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    1. Yes, a good piece by Kelly, I agree; but hardly definitive, since it ignores the crude, Dantean, psychological manipulation of Irish Catholics by the institutional Church for any non-conformity to its liturgical and moral norms.

      The appearance of universal compliance in the Irish Catholic Church during such periods as the 1950s was a facade of sorts, driven perhaps as much by fear of damnation for failing to comply with liturgical and other norms (Mass attendance, etc) as by any expression of faith in Jesus Christ.

      As more and more Irish people lost confidence in the institutuinal Church through its increasingly visible moral violations (the sexual abuse of children, the attempts to conceal this abuse, the extent of financial corruption, especially among the clerial 'hierarchy', etc), their fear of non-conformity proportionately ebbed, farther and farther.

      From a sociological perspective, what largely 'united' the Irish Catholic Church in these glory periods was not a common faith and praxis in the divinity and teaching of Jesus Christ, but a bondage of laity to clergy generated through fear of non-complaince or, more particularly, of the moral sanctions imposed for it by Canon Law.

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  18. If you go into the storerooms at Maynooth. You will find fingers everywhere. It’s disgusting.

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    1. What in Hades does that mean?

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  19. Amy has let us down, again.

    https://www.facebook.com/stephen.genockey/posts/10156599410499015

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  20. "The Irish apostosised because they saw their clergy do so first".

    http://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2018/05/29/the-church-must-confront-its-failings-in-ireland/

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    1. I wont be taking lessons from that English Catholic rag. It needs to get its own act in order over there. If it wasn't for the many Irish Clergy propping up the English Church over the years it wouldn't have a Church of its own. Maybe it should address it's deeply rooted anti-irish attitude that still exists today

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    2. Thank you for your balanced and even handed response.

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  21. 20:07, so Irish clergy here set an impeccable moral example?

    The Catholic Herald is right. As for its being an 'English Catholic rag', I distinctly recall cancelling my subscription for it because of the pro-Irish-republican nature of some articles it carried.

    If Irish priests in England propped up anything, then more likely than not it was themselves in assorted English bars (or secretly, in presbyteries).πŸ˜†

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    1. You'd know all about that.

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  22. Mullaney is persecuting Fr Tom Surlis.

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  23. Most of the congreation walks out because a Dublin priest tells a few home truths.

    http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2018/05/28/thousands-of-irelands-unborn-babies-will-now-never-live-to-grow-old/#.WwwfpdNNWPg.facebook

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  24. Ireland has a policy of high immigration because it is underpopulated! It also has about one quarter of the abortion rate in the UK. This will immediately change because it will become 'easier' and more acceptable to society. Many of those young people celebrating the change would obviously been themselves aborted if the change had happened earlier. I wouldn't reckon much for my own chances if my parents had been able to 'get rid' in a situation in which society had congratulated them for doing so. In many cases in the UK, it's just contraception post-event for those who couldn't be bothered to take a pill and this is what will happen in Ireland.

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  25. Who does Stephen Nolan think he is ! If the couple were strong advocates for abortion why in the hell to they want a Catholic Marriage. The priest maybe was naive to send them a message and not expect the likes of Nolan to make a big news story. Sure he doesn't like negative stories coming out on him. He expects apologies He doesn't represent Catholics or their views. Pat you should marry the couple.

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    1. Because they are cultural Catholics who don't find a registry office a congenial backdrop for the wedding photos. I've been to more weddings than enough where there's a big Nuptial Mass for a couple and congregation who don't even darken the doors at Christmas and Easter.

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  26. I just find it odd that an organisation which is pro-life requires all professional members to be celibate & chaste.

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