Will the real Labour Party please stand up....
The plot thickens on the Irish government-Vatican embassy issue. The last update we got told us that Fine Gael back benchers were in revolt, as were 100,000 citizens who registered their disapproval with the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs. We were also told, by means of a statement from the party whip, that the Labour Party back benchers were full square behind the decision.
However, all is not as it seems: apparently, the Labour back benchers are in revolt too, and the statement issued by the party whip came as a big surprise to them and is, we might say, not a reflection of reality, perhaps more of a socialist aspiration which, it appears, is failing to materialise. Like the Fine Gael back benchers, not in splendid isolation like their leaders, Labour back benchers are feeling the heat from the citizens.
What is most interesting is that the Labour back benchers are getting an earful at their Church gate collections. Yes, my friends, you heard correctly, a socialist political party with an anti-Catholic agenda turns up at Church gates to look for money from Catholics for their party coffers. That's Ireland for you. Personally I believe that no political party, regardless of ideology should be allowed to conduct Church gate collection, most especially when those parties, Fine Gael and Labour for example, are waging an open war with the Church. They are keen to talk about the separation of Church and state, but when it comes to the Church gate collections, well then the boundaries are ever so blurred!
But that's a separate issue. What is going on in Labour? The TDs are not happy with the impression that their leader and his minions are giving that the party is anti-Catholic (to be honest, it is more than an impression). Indeed the phrase "McCarthyite" has been used by one Labour member to describe the language being used with regard to the Catholic Church - I wouldn't disagree: Labour was proposing to screen candidates for the civil service to see if they were Catholic, and so prevent their promotion up the ranks. They are reversing on that one, it seems.
What's going to happen? Well, I suppose, socialists have the venerable tradition of staging coups and eliminating the leader - they could do that and elect a more mainstream leader who will be more open and listen to people, and who would replace the Labour ministers in the government. If the back benchers want to reverse the view that the party is solidly anti-Catholic, then they will have to do something about Gilmore and co.
Until serious action is taken, many of us will have no other choice but to take the front bench of the party as they are presenting themselves and as they act and as representing the views of the party as a whole: as people who want to eradicate Catholics from public life, and God knows what else. The way things are going, it seems as if they'll be opening gulags on deserted islands around the coast and populating them with priests and Catholic civil servants. Any chance that fear might be assuaged by a good old fashioned heave at the top?
The TD who was advocating the screening of civil servants used to be the Principal of a Catholic school. If the Irish Church had not spent years accommodating people like that, things might be very different now.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent analysis
ReplyDeleteIggy O Donovan,
Drogheda
The Labour Party in Ireland has been "anti-Catholic" in its principles and policies for decades. They have simply been emboldened by the apparent success of the onslaught against God, faith and the Natural Law, and in particular, the bearer of those eternal truths, the Catholic Church - to make their irrational attacks more explicit. The Labour Party and people of their militant atheistic and totalitarian ilk in other parties, the mainstream Media, academia, etc. have enjoyed being in the ascendant (or should I say, the Ascendancy?!) for all of my lifetime (I was born in the late sixties). These people despise the Constitution for its Natural Law and Judeo-Christian philosophy which severely restricts the power of the State and acknowledges the inherent nature and rights of the person, and the natural institutions of marriage and family. They are intent on destroying the Constitution - and have had a lot of success in laying the groundwork among the public and the civil service. As I said in response to an earlier post, those civil servants who uphold the Constitution, as it applies to various issues (as they are bound to do) are derided and vilified. There is no professionalism - by that, I mean an independent intellectual rigour, undefiled by political prejudices - in the Civil Service. Policies that are contrary to the Constitution are supported across the Civil Service, and if a civil servant does his duty by providing honest independent analysis in this regard, he is sidelined and discriminated against. There has been very little objection, including from Church leaders against policies, and even laws, e.g. the Civil Partnership Act, that contravene the Constitution and the Natural Moral Law. In fact, many dissident Catholic priests, such as the ACP, have cooperated with and supported these unconstitutional laws and policies, helping to bring about the great moral confusion and antipathy that prevails in Irish society, and Irish politics. Many of the leaders in the Catholic Church in Ireland have been complicit in creating the current war on the Natural Law, objective reason and morality that has caused the constant attacks on human rights and nature - attacks on faith, conscience (moral reason), life itself, marriage, fatherhood, motherhood, rights and duties of mothers and fathers, etc. They are most anxious to do away with the inalienable constitutional rights to conscience and religion, which enable us, nay oblige us, to object to, and refuse to recognise, or comply with laws that are invalid as contravening the Natural Law (and the Constitution, insofar as it still stands).
ReplyDeleteThe decision of the Labour Whip to issue the statement of conformity has a real Soviet feel to it. Ah, it would make you go all nostalgic for the idyllic years of the Cold War.
ReplyDelete