May 29, 2018
A Bloody New Stage in Ireland's Self-Mutilation
By Jack Cashill

"A nation that kills its own children has no future," said Pope John Paul II. If that be true, the Republic of Ireland signed away not only its future on Friday, but also the last vestiges of what had been the most distinctive and morally coherent culture in Europe.

For better or worse, I have been able to witness the transformation up close. I first visited the country in the early 1970s as a student hitchhiker and came back a year or so later for a more extended stay. In the early 1990s, my family and I spent the better part of a year in Galway, in the west of Ireland, where my wife taught at the city's university.

Like most Americans of Irish descent, I felt a certain attachment to the country, and during that year in Ireland I had a chance to explore it. Although the churches were not quite as full as they were in the 1970s and the girls not quite as chaste -- or so I was told -- not much appeared to have changed in the twenty years since my last extended stay.

In the early 1990s, there was still no real attempt to separate church and state. Some 93 percent of the population claimed affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church, "the Church." More than 60 percent attended Mass weekly. The Church oversaw the great majority of "public schools," including the schools my daughters attended, and prayer was a staple even in those it did not.

The church hierarchy took an active interest in national affairs. Partly as a result, divorce then was not merely illegal; it was unconstitutional. Abortion was not merely unconstitutional; it was unthinkable. "Choice" meant that women should have the option to leave the country for an abortion.

"Ho, ho, ho, ho," chanted a small, fringe group at a rally in Galway before a national referendum that year on abortion, "women have the right to go." In the referendum, they won this right for the first time, although some of the rural counties voted heavily against it.

Throughout Ireland's troubled history, the Church had been a stubbornly persistent source of both affirmation and identity. It was the Church that endowed the Irish with their oddly fatalistic good cheer; the Church that taught them to endure the grey and to seek light in the eternal. This otherworldliness helps explain the gallantly hopeless uprisings that dot Irish history as regularly the beads on a Rosary.

From the beginning, the Catholic Church in Ireland adapted well to pagan Celtic realities. Unlike many Christian sects, it offered no serious resistance to escapist pleasures like drinking, dancing, and gambling. Usually, in fact, quite the opposite. A local bingo parlor in Galway, for instance, offered a "pilgrimage to Lourdes" as its weekly grand prize. And no sacrament went uncelebrated or untoasted, the Last Rites included.

My younger daughter made her First Communion in Galway. Afterwards we had a reception much as we did for my older daughter who made her First Communion in Kansas City. Each started at 2 p.m. The Kansas City reception was over by 4 p.m. In Galway, at 11 p.m., I had to throw all the revelers out. To offer an open bar in Ireland, I learned, can be a dangerous proposition.

My favorite picture of our daughters I took in Galway in 1992. The photo captures them, seven and twelve respectively, on their way to school, each looking smart and proper in her jumper, sweater and natty little tie.

By 2005, when my wife had another teaching gig in Galway, I would have had to look mighty hard to find this kind of imagery. In the new age of ample discretionary income and open rebellion against the old order, schoolgirls wore slacks, uniform only in their slovenliness and their increasing broadness abeam. The girls, it seemed, were symptom of Ireland's increasingly obvious rush to become just another crappy little European country.

To be fair, some of the change made sense. Starting roughly in 1993, Ireland decided to throw off its sluggish, socialist past and join the modern world. It lowered the corporate income tax, cut the capital gains tax in half, kept the unions in check, and began to deregulate. With an educated, English-speaking workforce, Ireland came to serve as the ideal American gateway to doing business in Europe and, increasingly, as a self-generating economic engine.

The so-called "Celtic Tiger," however, only aggravated the nation's moral self-mutilation. In the United States, free market forces typically align themselves with the cultural right. In Ireland, they aligned with the cultural left, much as they do, say, in Silicon Valley. In 2005, for instance, the media reported the Dublin opening of a huge, 18-pole, British lap-dancing enterprise as proudly and shamelessly as a small market American city might announce the landing of an NBA franchise.

Now with more income and more access to the larger world, the Irish media and cultural elite yielded increasingly to the sweet siren song of imperial progressivism. Embarrassed by Ireland's traditional values, these influential folks imported the whole enchilada of new values concocted in the U.S. and codified in the E.U. -- unrestricted sexual freedom, radical feminism, gay rights, divorce, alternative family structure, open borders, even anti-Americanism. With their lock on what the Irish heard and read, they largely shamed their fellow citizens into acceptance or silence.

In the zero-sum spirit of this imported agenda, the Irish chattering classes had to identify an internal enemy to rebel against. In Britain and the United States, that enemy was the dead white male with his racist, colonial urges. Lacking such a history, the Irish chatterers singled out the most powerful force of tradition within their own country, and that just happened to be the Catholic Church.

The Church that was pounded daily in the media was not the one that built the schools and the hospitals, not the one that shaped the Irish character and "saved civilization," but the one that slowed the sexual revolution.

Unfortunately, some of the weaker clergy, caught up themselves in the "winds of change," were discreetly enabling the sexual revolution. As they did in America, the same media that cheered Roman Polanski and embraced Harvey Weinstein, focused their fury on wayward priests. They did this consciously to undermine the Irish Church's authority on moral issues, especially the one issue on which the Irish stubbornly refused to yield, abortion.

Scarcely a day went by during my 2005 visit that the state-owned broadcast media and the two major newspapers were not recalling some injustice, real or imagined, past or present, and carrying on about it. The chatterers encouraged this historically stoic people to grouse and point fingers, and many did.

One typical afternoon on national talk radio I listened as caller after caller recounted some unpleasantness from his or her Catholic childhood -- a slap, a grope, a mean stare, bad food at the home for unwed mothers, indeed the very need for such a home when the rest of Europe was treating itself to abortion and the pill.

Those Irish who resisted progressive trends -- in 2005, perhaps still the majority -- had scarily little voice. There was no Irish Rush Limbaugh, no Fox News, no National Review, nothing close.

The range of acceptable opinion in the Irish media on issues as important as sex, crime, family, faith, feminism, homosexuality, immigration, war, and peace was as narrow as a country lane. In its most orthodox moment, the Irish Catholic Church could not have been more oppressive or vengeful than the monolithic Irish cultural establishment of the early twentieth century.

The left had its way, and the results were as inevitable as the winds off Galway Bay. In the decade after my 2005 sojourn, for instance, syphilis and chlamydia rates doubled, and gonorrhea increased by a factor of four. In Europe, only the UK had a higher rate of STDs than Ireland.

As to HIV, despite the almost universal availability of condoms, more than 500 new cases of HIV were diagnosed in 2017, the highest numbers since records began. Roughly 10 percent of these cases were attributed to drugs, which were killing more than 200 Irish people each year through overdoses.

Even before the abortion referendum, the Irish were giving up on the future. Between 2008 and 2017, the Irish birthrate declined by nearly 20 percent, and foreign nationals were responsible for nearly a quarter of live births. In 2017, unmarried women accounted for nearly 40 percent of live births, nearly 60 percent in some cities with all the attendant crime and child abuse problems.

In 2017, there were roughly 104 boys born in Ireland to 100 girls suggesting the first hint of artificial sex selection through abortion. That boy-girl ratio will surely tick upwards as more parents/mothers start using their local abortion clinic to assure a boy in a one-child family.

The media tell us Friday in Ireland was a "great day for women." If they had a voice, those thousands of little girls to be killed in the womb just might take exception.

https://www.americanthinker.co..._selfmutilation.html

Sad

We made our first visit to Ireland exactly a year ago. My mother was all Irish and my father part, in fact DNA testing, discloses 60% Irish. We had a terrific driver who took us around both Dublin and the countryside, who was obviously a strong Republican (in the Irish sense of the word), but also seemed genuinely happy that relations with the UK were greatly improved.

I was sorry to hear that only 3% of Irish households spoke Gaeilge, even more sorry to read about the referendum ending Ireland’s abortion ban. “Women’s Rights”

Sad, but not surprising. Just one more example of the tragic destruction of morality around the world.

Sadly, abortion has become just one more method of birth control.

Or selective breeding where DNA tests, etc, determine many factors about the baby. Gender, etc. Unwanted are killed.

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
Sad, but not surprising. Just one more example of the tragic destruction of morality around the world. ...

Seems the concept of right and wrong, good and evil, is becoming very self serving and short sighted in much of society today. But as is an all to common pattern, short term pleasure, convenience, excitement, often cause long term damage.

The psychologist, Jordan B Peterson, has some very insightful videos about this phenomenon on youtube. Of course he is not the only one to notice our decline.
Basically, humans are assuming they can form a morality based on reason (= rationality). But reason cannot be a fundamental basis for an ethic, because humans can rationalize anything.

That is not to say that morality should conflict with reason or be irrational, but that it cannot be the basis for morality.

OFFS. All that happened was that Ireland voted to legalize abortion. Did you think the Catholic Church would not be involved in that campaign?

Take a look at Section 3, Subsection 3 of Article 40 of the current Irish Constitution as it existed before the election.

"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.

This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state.

This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state."

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie...ns/en/html#article40

If you want a formal citation, try www.taoiseach.gov.ie - I couldn't get the URL to work.

IOW, Irish women can get an abortion at home instead of having to hop on a ferry for Britain. This is no more a big deal than the decision that women in one US state can get abortions there rather than having to hop on a bus to the next state over.

Seriously, how upset are you guys that De Valera's references to the Catholic Church and Ireland as a Catholic state were removed from Preamble to the Irish Constitution?

I sent this to my Belfast born, pig shit poor raised mother, just to get her take. I was not disappointed.

quote:

I could write a paper rebutting this tourist's romantic, Vaseline-coated view of Ireland. He'd like to see slaves still toting bales of cotton along the Charleston Harbour, I'm sure. The Catholic Church, I think, is right up there with the British in its suppression of the Irish, esp women and children. This author calls pedophile priests "wayward priests." He hasn't a clue. My little brother is lying in a mass grave in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast. The Bishop of Down and Conor sold that mass grave to the Nature Conservancy so people could hike over the bones bobbing up from the bog in the springtime. He didn't GAS about the "unbaptised," poor and dispossessed lying in there. The writer clearly misses the Hollywood version of Ireland. Ireland is catching up to the rest of the world and it ain't pretty. Keep in mind that not too long ago Ireland tried to prevent a young girl from going to England to have an abortion. Her father had raped her.

Not much reason even talking about it. You are either for a women to chose what or when she wants to produce children no matter the opinion of the father. Or you don't. Me I have children and grandchildren. I cannot conceive of a person willingly aborting a healthy growing baby just cause it's a inconvenience or unplanned event. To save the life of the mother or a rape case? Sure a choice should be available. But as a form of birth control,nope. Life becomes valueless when you kill your own young.

quote:

Originally posted by Fla. Jim:
Not much reason even talking about it. You are either for a women to chose what or when she wants to produce children no matter the opinion of the father. Or you don't. Me I have children and grandchildren. I cannot conceive of a person willingly aborting a healthy growing baby just cause it's a inconvenience or unplanned event. To save the life of the mother or a rape case? Sure a choice should be available. But as a form of birth control,nope. Life becomes valueless when you kill your own young.

If the sex is consensual, what they are saying is they made a choice but want to kill the results of that choice.

quote:

IOW, Irish women can get an abortion at home instead of having to hop on a ferry for Britain. This is no more a big deal than the decision that women in one US state can get abortions there rather than having to hop on a bus to the next state over.

So, as long as "terminating a fetus" is legal in one place, it ought to be legal everywhere? It's more convenient that way?

I guess you're no fan of federalism?

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

IOW, Irish women can get an abortion at home instead of having to hop on a ferry for Britain. This is no more a big deal than the decision that women in one US state can get abortions there rather than having to hop on a bus to the next state over.

So, as long as "terminating a fetus" is legal in one place, it ought to be legal everywhere? It's more convenient that way?

I guess you're no fan of federalism?

And if California were to legalize all drugs; protect and provide for all illegal immigrants, allow them to vote, including gang bangers; and make illegal all firearms and ammo, except by gov't employees; those laws should be federalized as well. What the heck.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fla. Jim:
Not much reason even talking about it. You are either for a women to chose what or when she wants to produce children no matter the opinion of the father. Or you don't. Me I have children and grandchildren. I cannot conceive of a person willingly aborting a healthy growing baby just cause it's a inconvenience or unplanned event. To save the life of the mother or a rape case? Sure a choice should be available. But as a form of birth control,nope. Life becomes valueless when you kill your own young.

If the sex is consensual, what they are saying is they made a choice but want to kill the results of that choice.

Understand. Life/babies become just so much unwanted garbage to be taken out. I'm frankly just shocked we don't extend the abortion concept to say 21 yrs old. I mean anyone raise a teenager? They can be quite the bother and all that.

Abortion thread. These always go well.

Where’s my beer and popcorn?

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
So, as long as "terminating a fetus" is legal in one place, it ought to be legal everywhere? It's more convenient that way?

I guess you're no fan of federalism?

And I guess if you can't win an argument you'll immediately start another, regardless of how baseless an accusation you have to make in order to change the subject?

This is no major change. To call it a "Bloody new stage in Ireland's self-mutilation" is nothing short of histrionic because there's no reason to think that this will radically change the amount of deaths that happen in Ireland and it isn't a new stage of anything. Hell, if were then why isn't the word "abortion" in the title? Because that would actually clue people in that the article has nothing to do with renewed factional fighting in Ireland, perhaps?

Religion->Morality->Prosperity->Decadence->No Religion->No Morality->Destruction

Whether or not you believe in any of the divine aspects of the Bible, the historical account of the Israelites alone is a testament to how this cycle is repeated in ancient history, and for the rest of the world up through and beyond the Middle Ages to present day.

Was Moloch an actual thing, or just a convenience for mothers that didn't want the byproduct of their fornication?

Once a society has no need for religion, their morals crumble and their government and society isn't far behind.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
So, as long as "terminating a fetus" is legal in one place, it ought to be legal everywhere? It's more convenient that way?

I guess you're no fan of federalism?

And I guess if you can't win an argument you'll immediately start another, regardless of how baseless an accusation you have to make in order to change the subject?

This is no major change. To call it a "Bloody new stage in Ireland's self-mutilation" is nothing short of histrionic because there's no reason to think that this will radically change the amount of deaths that happen in Ireland and it isn't a new stage of anything. Hell, if were then why isn't the word "abortion" in the title? Because that would actually clue people in that the article has nothing to do with renewed factional fighting in Ireland, perhaps?

I think Veeper quite correctly addressed the matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Fla. Jim:
Understand. Life/babies become just so much unwanted garbage to be taken out. I'm frankly just shocked we don't extend the abortion concept to say 21 yrs old. I mean anyone raise a teenager? They can be quite the bother and all that.

A late former boss and great friend argued for many years that abortion should be legal at least until 18 years of age. I *think* he was joking, but sometimes he sounded pretty serious...

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
I think Veeper quite correctly addressed the matter.

I appreciate the kind words. What's astounding to me is the fact that unlike any other time in history, when sacrificing children to whatever cause or religion, we have the technology to keep conception from happening, save the children from death at their earliest points of developmentment, and most importantly we know scientifically, without a doubt, that conception creates a unique string of DNA.

How incredibly odd that we or anyone would use liberty as a shield to protect a practice of liquifying a human brain, collapsing the skull, shredding rest of the body with tools, and throwing the human carcass (complete with his or her unique DNA) into the garbage.

In my second year of college (1977) I took a philosophy class. The grading was as follows:

We would write three papers on three different controversial subjects, and our final grade would be an average of those three grades.

The first topic was, indeed, controversial. I received an A on that paper. The second topic was also controversial and I earned another A. However, the third topic was abortion.

I contended that the topic of abortion is not controversial at all. I asserted that for a topic to be controversial, there has to be some credibility to both sides of the argument, and that there is no credibility on the pro-abortion side of this argument. There is not a single human being that doesn't realize that abortion is the murder of an unquestionably innocent person. Further, there is no one who truly believes that life does not begin at the moment of conception. The reality is that women who opt for abortion are willing to have the innocent life within their bodies murdered and discarded because they don't want to be bothered with the result of their irresponsible behavior, and they lie to themselves about what they're actually doing in order to sooth their own consciences. The pro-death crowd will inevitably bring up the argument about rape, but when the women fill out the questionnaires at the death clinics, rape is only mentioned .01% of the time. Clearly, 99.99% of the time, it's about convenience for the "mother." Yes - the women who go to the death clinics to have the "non-human" "mass" within their bodies disposed of are called "mothers" by the clinics.

I received a failing grade for that paper.

But of course. You stated the sky was indeed blue. Not the grey that was acceptable!